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An Untethered Miniature Soft Jumping Robot Inspired by Quadrupeds

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Abstract

In recent years, designing a soft robot that can jump continuously and quickly explore in a narrow space has been a hot research topic. With the continuous efforts of researchers, many types of actuators have been developed and successfully employed to actuate the rapid locomotion of soft robots. Although these mechanisms have enabled soft robots with excellent movement capabilities, they largely rely on external energy supply cables, which greatly limits their applications. Therefore, it is still a big challenge to realize the unconstrained movement of the soft robot and the flexible adjustment of the movement direction in a narrow space. Here, a wireless magnetically controlled soft jumping robot with single-leg is proposed, which can achieve continuous and rapid jumping motion. What's more interesting is that by changing the frequency and waveform of the control signal, this soft robot can easily switch between forward and backward motions. This motion direction switching function enables the magnetically controlled soft robot to return to the initial position without adjusting the direction when it completes the operation in a narrow pipe or takes the wrong path, which greatly improves the motion efficiency of the soft jumping robot and broadens its application field.

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Data Availability

The data and materials that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.61803088), Joint fund of the Science & Technology Department of Liaoning Province and the State Key Laboratory of Robotics, China (Grant No. 2021-KF-22-13) and Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (No. 2022J01543).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350108, China

    Tianliang Zhong, Fanan Wei & Zhushan Zhai

  2. School of Electromechanical and Automotive Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, Shandong, China

    Wenguang Yang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, Liaoning, China

    Fanan Wei

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  1. Tianliang Zhong
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Correspondence to Fanan Wei.

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Zhong, T., Wei, F., Zhai, Z. et al. An Untethered Miniature Soft Jumping Robot Inspired by Quadrupeds. J Bionic Eng 20, 1467–1480 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-023-00342-0

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