Locomotion strategy for a peristaltic crawling robot in a 2-dimensional space

Abstract

An earthworm moves by peristaltic crawling, which propagates a longitudinal wave from the front of the body to the back by varying the thickness and length of its segments. This locomotion mechanism can move while keeping a large area in contact with the ground. Further, the amount of space required by this locomotion mechanism is less than that by other locomotion mechanisms. Therefore, it is desirable to apply this mechanism not only to robots for rescue and limited environment exploration operations but also to locomotive endoscopic robots for medical engineering. In this study, we developed a peristaltic crawling robot that can move not only in a tube but also on a plane surface Furthermore; we propose a peristaltic crawling robot and its locomotion strategy. As a result, the simulation and experimental results showed good performance.