Development of a quadruped soft robot with fully IPMC body

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a small quadruped walking robot fully made of IPMC (Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite) actuator. From a sheet of IPMC with the patterned electrode, we obtain a soft robot whose actuator is the body structure itself. Utilizing the patterning of the electrodes, the IPMC robot achieves multi-degrees of freedom motion compared with conventional robots with non-patterned IPMCs. The experimental result demonstrates the motion and the property of the developed quadruped robot.