Abstract
Investigators discuss new findings in Robotics. According to news reporting originating in Zhejiang, People's Republic of China, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "Almost all forms of soft crawling robots and animals rely on frictional anisotropy to achieve terrestrial locomotion. However, the electroadhesion force of actuators is limited to the materials, roughness of various terrain, and patterning high- and low- friction materials on the ventral side of the robot can only enable the robot to crawl along a single direction." Financial supporters for this research include National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Zhejiang University, "This paper presents a novel pneumatic foot that can regulate the friction between itself and the crawling surface to achieve frictional anisotropy in two opposite directions. The design scheme, working mechanism and analytical model based on the energy method of the pneumatic foot are described. The accuracy of the analytical model is verified by numerical simulation and experimental study. A soft crawling robot, including its locomotion mode and control system, is designed. Crawling experiments on various terrain and payload experiments are conducted to prove the feasibility of the pneumatic foot. The pneumatic foot can enable the robot to crawl on various terrain at a maximum speed of 0.128 BL/s. When the payloads are 4.29 times of the robot's weight, the crawling speed is still relatively high (0.108 BL/s)."
NETL
NSTL
Elsevier