Kresling Origami With Differentiation Flaw Design for Multidirectional Crawling Robot

Abstract

Multidirectional motion ability is a significant factor for crawling robots. Inspired by the Kresling origami pattern, this work introduces a soft pneumatic actuator that can achieve a compound motion including twisting, contraction, and multidirectional bending under the control of one single air source. By the differentiation design of bistable flaws for the side face of Kresling, the multidirectional motions of a Kresling-flaw module and the combined modules are achieved by adjusting the internal air pressure. In addition, the system is easily manufactured and assembled based on 3D printing technology. By connecting various modules, we demonstrated a reconfigurable crawling robot capable of multidirectional motions (forward, backward, left and right). The differentiation design of bistable flaws combined with Kresling or other origami structures offers a way to introduce more motion modes for the origami-inspired robots.