Design and Modeling of a Biomimetic Gastropod-like Soft Robot with Wet Adhesive Locomotion
Wenci Xin, Flippy Tianle Pan, Yehui Li, Philip Wai Yan Chiu, Zheng Li
Abstract
Crawling through various terrains has been a long research interest. In recent years, quite a number of soft crawling robots have been developed. However, locomoting in an elastic, humid, and slippery environment remains a challenge. In nature, gastropods, such as snails, live in humid environment and could crawl through all kinds of surface conditions by using wet adhesion. In the wet adhesive locomotion, the mucus is crucial in adhering the gastropod while allowing forward motion. Previously, we presented one snail-like soft robot that mimics the gastropods. In this work, we propose a second version and present a theoretical model of the mucus simulant. In addition, the dynamic model of the soft robot’s wet adhesive locomotion is developed for the first time. Results show that the speed of the current version is 5 times than that of the previous one through the optimization of design. Also shown by the results that the mucus helps to speed up the robot by at least 2.7 times.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2021_designandmodelin,
title = {Design and Modeling of a Biomimetic Gastropod-like Soft Robot with Wet Adhesive Locomotion},
author = {Wenci Xin and Flippy Tianle Pan and Yehui Li and Philip Wai Yan Chiu and Zheng Li},
booktitle = {ICRA 2021},
year = {2021}
}