An Untethered Soft Robotic Dog Standing and Fast Trotting with Jointless and Resilient Soft Legs

Soft robots are compliant, impact resistant, and relatively safe in comparison to hard robots. However, the development of untethered soft robots is still a major challenge because soft legs cannot effectively support the power and control systems. Most untethered soft robots apply a crawling or wal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2023-12, Vol.8 (8), p.596
Main Authors: Li, Yunquan, Li, Yujia, Ren, Tao, Xia, Jiutian, Liu, Hao, Wu, Changchun, Lin, Senyuan, Chen, Yonghua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuators
Body length
Body mass
Design
Gait
Health aspects
impact resistance
Leg
Legs
Locomotion
quadruped robot
Robotics
Robots
soft robot
trotting gait
untethered system
Walking
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Summary:Soft robots are compliant, impact resistant, and relatively safe in comparison to hard robots. However, the development of untethered soft robots is still a major challenge because soft legs cannot effectively support the power and control systems. Most untethered soft robots apply a crawling or walking gait, which limits their locomotion speed and mobility. This paper presents an untethered soft robot that can move with a bioinspired dynamic trotting gait. The robot is driven by inflatable soft legs designed on the basis of the pre-charged pneumatic (PCP) actuation principle. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed robot can trot stably with the fastest speed of 23 cm/s (0.97 body length per second) and can trot over different terrains (slope, step, rough terrain, and natural terrains). The robotic dog can hold up to a 5.5 kg load in the static state and can carry up to 1.5 kg in the trotting state. Without any rigid components inside the legs, the developed robotic dog exhibits resistance to large impacts, i.e., after withstanding a 73 kg adult (46 times its body mass), the robotic dog can stand up and continue its trotting gait. This innovative robotic system has great potential in equipment inspection, field exploration, and disaster rescue.
ISSN:2313-7673
2313-7673
DOI:10.3390/biomimetics8080596