Over the last decade, many bio-inspired crawling robots have been proposed by adopting the principle of two-anchor crawling or anisotropic friction-based vibrational crawling. However, these robots are complicated in structure and vulnerable to conta...
This paper presents a novel reconfigurable crawling robot based on an origami twisted tower structure. Compared with other origami structures, the twisted tower can achieve extension, contraction, and bending motions as the flexible body parts in rob...
Origami crawling robots, inspired by the principles of origami folding, have emerged as a promising approach for developing lightweight and flexible robots capable of navigating tight spaces. These robots utilize anisotropic friction, where the frict...
Soft robots have shown great application potential in human–computer interaction, scientific exploration, and biomedical fields. However, they generally face issues like poor load capacity. Inspired by the propagation and movement mechanisms of...
The better application of crawl robots depends on their ability to adapt to unstructured environments with significant variations in their structural shape and size. This paper presents the design and analysis of a novel robot with different locomoti...
Twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) actuators are becoming increasingly prevalent in soft robotic fields due to their powerful and hysteresis-free stroke, large specific work density, and ease of fabrication. This paper presents a soft crawling robot wi...
Origami structures are highly demanded for engineering applications. Using origami folding to design and actuate mechanisms and machines offers attractive opportunities. In this paper, we design a crawling robot driven by pneumatic foldable actuators...
Terrain perception greatly enhances the performance of robots, providing them with essential information on the nature of terrain being traversed. Several living beings in nature offer interesting inspirations which adopt different gait patterns acco...
This paper presents the design, development, and testing of a robot that combines soft-body grasping and crawling locomotion to navigate tubular objects. Inspired by the natural snakes’ climbing locomotion of tubular objects, the soft robot inc...
Load capacity is an important index to reflect the practicability of legged robots. Existing research into quadruped robots has not analyzed their load performance in terms of their structural design and control method from a systematic point of view...
Soft robotics is one of the most popular areas in the field of robotics due to advancements in bionic technology, novel materials, and additive manufacturing. Existing soft crawling robots with specific structures have a single locomotion mode and ca...
We developed a crawling magnetic robot (CMR), which can stably navigate and perform biopsies remotely in tubular environments by controlling a magnetic field. The CMR is composed of a crawling part and a biopsy part. The crawling part allows the CMR...
The development of a soft crawling robot (SCR) capable of quick folding and recovery has important application value in the field of biomimetic engineering. This article proposes an origami-inspired vacuum-actuated foldable soft crawling robot (OVFSC...
Nonskeletal animals such as worms achieve locomotion via crawling. We consider them as an inspiration to design robots that help underline the mechanisms of crawling. In this paper, we aim to identify an approach with the simplest structure and actua...
To face the challenge of adapting to complex terrains and environments, we develop a novel wheel-legged robot that can switch motion modes to adapt to different environments. The robot can perform efficient and stable upright balanced locomotion on f...
Cebrenus Rechenburgi, a member of the huntsman spider family have inspired researchers to adopt different locomotion modes in reconfigurable robotic development. Object-of-interest perception is crucial for such a robot to provide fundamental informa...
To make the snake robot crawl quickly along the high-voltage cable, this paper employs the Simulated Annealing Algorithm (SAA) to find the optimal step size for the spiral-winding gait of the snake robot and improve its crawling speed along the high-...
Designing an urban reconnaissance robot is highly challenging work given the nature of the terrain in which these robots are required to operate. In this work, we attempt to extend the locomotion capabilities of these robots beyond what is currently...
Traditional mobile robots with fixed structures lack the ability to cope with complex terrains and tasks. Reconfigurable modular mobile robots have received considerable attention as they can automatically reassemble according to the changing environ...
As robots begin to perform jobs autonomously, with minimal or no human intervention, a new challenge arises: robots also need to autonomously detect errors and recover from faults. In this paper, we present a Support Vector Machine (SVM)-based fault...
This paper presents a novel soft crawling robot controlled by gesture recognition, aimed at enhancing the operability and adaptability of soft robots through natural human–computer interactions. The Leap Motion sensor is employed to capture han...
Biological systems can adaptively navigate multi-terrain environments via morphological and behavioral flexibility. While robotic systems increasingly achieve locomotion versatility in one or two domains, integrating terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial...
In this paper, a multi-functional soft robot module that can be used to constitute a variety of soft robots is proposed. The body of the soft robot module made of rubber is in the shape of a long strip, with cylindrical chambers at both the top end a...
The sliding suction robots designed for wall-climbing functions could have accuracy defects due to suction cup sealing, friction interference, and surface adaptability. Hence, this work develops a biomimetic, flexible, sliding suction cup suitable fo...
In this paper we present a wheeled robot platform for child-parent robot collaboration. The new robot, named Big STAR (BSTAR), is fitted with a tail that can act as a ramp to carry and deploy a child RSTAR that can crawl between small cracks and unde...
Crawling robots are the focus of intelligent inspection research, and the main feature of this type of robot is the flexibility of in-plane attitude adjustment. The crawling robot HIT_Spibot is a new type of steam generator heat transfer tube inspect...
In a recent study, we developed a minimally actuated robot that utilizes wave-like locomotion and analyzed its kinematics. In this paper, we present an analysis of the robot’s locomotion between two highly flexible surfaces. Initially, we creat...
Magnetic soft continuum robots (MSCRs) hold significant potential in fulfilling the requirements of vascular interventional robots, enabling safe access to difficult-to-reach areas with enhanced active maneuverability, shape morphing capabilities, an...
Complex space missions require more space robotic extravehicular operations required to crawl on spacecraft surfaces with discontinuous features at the graspable point, greatly increasing the difficulty of space robot motion manipulation. Therefore,...
Underwater manipulation is one of the most significant functions of the deep-sea crawling and swimming robot (DCSR), which relies on the high-accuracy control of the body posture. As the actuator of body posture control, the position control performa...
Conventional motors with complicated electromagnetic structures are difficult to miniaturise for millimetre- and centimetre-sized robots. Instead, small-scale robots are actuated using a variety of functional materials. We proposed a novel robot prop...
Soft robotics is a rapidly advancing field that leverages the mechanical properties of flexible materials for applications necessitating safe interaction and exceptional adaptability within the environment. This paper focuses on developing a pneumati...
Confined space searches such as pipeline inspections are widely demanded in various scenarios, where lightweight soft robots with inherent compliance to adapt to unstructured environments exhibit good potential. We proposed a tubular soft robot with...
This article addresses the challenge of minimizing landing impacts for legged space robots during on-orbit operations. Inspired by the agility of cats, we investigate the role of forelimbs in the landing process. By identifying the kinematic chain of...
This work presents a novel type of soft reconfigurable mobile robot with multimodal locomotion, which is created using a controllable magneto-elastica-reinforced composite elastomer. The rope motor-driven method is employed to modulate magnetics&ndas...
Inchworms are a widely adopted bio-inspired model for soft crawling robots. Taking advantage of the good controllability of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA), this paper designs and manufactures an inchworm-inspired soft robot driven by SMA. Firstly, in the s...
Steel gates are widely used in river and sea engineering to ensure water retention and flow regulation. Due to the attachment and the alternation of dry and wet environments, water retention easily causes corrosion and destruction, while the attachme...
Based on the motion principle of bionic earthworms, we designed and fabricated a novel crawling robot driven by pneumatic power. Its structure is divided into four segments, and its motion process is periodic with high stability. Due to the pneumatic...
Refineries’ structures require constant inspection, maintenance of their structural health condition, and safety of the users; however, accessing these structures is getting more and more difficult due to their enormous height and size. In order to d...
As an important branch of robotics, soft robots have the advantages of strong flexibility, a simple structure, and high safety. These characteristics enable soft robots to be widely used in various fields such as biomedicine, military reconnaissance,...
In this study, the authors focus on the structural design of and recovery methods for a damaged quadruped robot with a limited number of functional legs. Because the pre-designed controller cannot be executed when the robot is damaged, a control stra...
Underwater sensor deployment in military applications requires high precision, yet existing robotic solutions often lack the maneuverability and adaptability required for complex aquatic environments. To address this gap, this study proposes a bio-in...
Longer distance water delivery culverts pose obstacles such as deposited silt, stones, and dead trees. In this paper, a crawling robot is designed to mimic the joint structure of a turtle using bionic design principles. The mechanism and gait of the...
This paper proposes a new type of omnidirectional mobile robot for land and air, which has three motion modes, combines the motion characteristics of land motion and air flight, has the ability to climb walls, and can be actively deformed to adapt to...
The gecko-inspired crawling robot driven by water hydraulic artificial muscles (WHAMs) incorporates the stable structural characteristics of geckos, making it particularly suitable for operation in aquatic environments. Conventional crawling robots t...
In this work we present a soft crawler fabricated using a magneto-active elastomer. The crawler is controlled by an external magnetic field to produce two locomotion patterns: peristaltic and caterpillar crawling. Due to its structural simplicity, lo...
Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) consist of an elastomeric bladder wrapped in a Kevlar braid. When inflated, PAMs expand radially and contract axially, producing large axial forces. PAMs are often utilized for their high specific work and specific...
This paper reports on a transformable sheet type robot that can be thrown from the air. Since sheet type robots can change their own shape and perform tasks according to the situation, they are expected to play an active role in situations with many...
This paper presents a crawling mechanism using a soft-tentacle gripper integrated into an unmanned aerial vehicle for pipe inspection in industrial environments. The objective was to allow the aerial robot to perch and crawl along the pipe, minimizin...
Kirigami-inspired geometries offer a lightweight, bioinspired strategy for friction enhancement and anchoring in soft robotics. This study presents a bioinspired kirigami structure designed to enhance the anchoring performance of soft robotic systems...
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