Lightweight indestructible soft robot

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a lightweight indestructible soft robot. Soft robots have soft bodies to adapt to various environments. They are expected to be crash‐proof and to be utilized in unpredictable environments. Although many soft robots driven by pneumatic actuators are proposed due to the affinity between soft robots and the air, they require an external large‐scale air pump to be controlled. It limits the applications of the soft robots to isolated environments. To solve the problem, we employed a wire‐type artificial muscle and developed a lightweight, indestructible and soft robot. We conducted some experiments and confirmed the potential of the developed robot. © 2017 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.