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Soft robots often draw inspiration from nature to navigate different environments. Although the inching motion and crawling motion of caterpillars have been widely studied in the design of soft robots, the steering motion with local bending control remains challenging. To address this challenge, we explore modular origami units which constitute building blocks for mimicking the segmented caterpillar body. Based on this concept, we report a modular soft Kresling origami crawling robot enabled by electrothermal actuation. A compact and lightweight Kresling structure is designed, fabricated, and characterized with integrated thermal bimorph actuators consisting of liquid crystal elastomer and polyimide layers. With the modular design and reprogrammable actuation, a multiunit caterpillar-inspired soft robot composed of both active units and passive units is developed for bidirectional locomotion and steering locomotion with precise curvature control. We demonstrate the modular design of the Kresling origami robot with an active robotic module picking up cargo and assembling with another robotic module to achieve a steering function. The concept of modular soft robots can provide insight into future soft robots that can grow, repair, and enhance functionality.
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Designing Plant-Driven Actuators for Robots to Grow, Age, and Decay
Designing plant-driven actuators presents an opportunity to create new types of devices that grow, age, and decay, such as robots that embody these qualities in their physical structure. Plant-robot hybrids that grow and decay incorporate unpredictable and gradual transformations inherent across living organisms and suggest an alternative to the design principles of immediacy, responsiveness, control, accuracy, and durability commonly found in robotic design. To explore this, we present a design space of primitives for plant-driven robotic actuators. Proof-of-concept prototypes illustrate how concepts like slow change, slow movement, decay, and destruction can be incorporated into robotic forms. We describe the design considerations required for building plant-driven actuators for robots, including experimental findings regarding the mechanical properties of plant forces. Finally, we speculate on the potential benefits of plant-robot hybrids to interactive domains such as robotics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1830471
- PAR ID:
- 10563612
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400705830
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2481-2496
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- IT University of Copenhagen Denmark
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661519
