Soft Robots for Crawling and Jumping via Deformation

Abstract

We describe crawling and jumping by the deformation of a soft robot. Locomotion over rough terrain has been achieved mainly by rigid body systems including crawlers and leg mechanisms. This paper presents an alternative method, one that uses deformation of a robot body. We employ soft actuators to controllably deform a robot body, enabling it to crawl and jump on terrain via charge and release of elastic potential energy of the body. We experimentally show that circular soft robots and spherical soft robots, which consist of an elastic shell made of rubber or spring steel and SMA (shape memory alloy) coils, can crawl on a flat terrain, climb up a slope, and jump over a terrain. We also apply a particle-based modeling to simulate the behavior of a circular soft robot.