Swing characteristics on tail of tortoise-like flexible micro-robot

Abstract

Dynamic effects are very important in improving the design and study of the micro-robot. In the paper, our preliminary work in using ICPF to develop a novel tortoise-like flexible micro-robot with four legs and one tail is reported, which can crawl and swim underwater. ICPF is the abbreviation of Ionic Conducting Polymer gel Film which is a kind of smart film and can give large and fast bending displacement in the presence of a low applied voltage in wet condition. For controlling and analyzing easily the robot, we establish the micro-robot's tail dynamic model by applying Pseudo-Rigid-Body-Dynamic-Model (PRBDM). The model is established by considering the dynamic effect of the robot's tail, which is based on statics and kinematics. Then, the frequency analysis of a micro-robot based on PRBDM is investigated. Based on the PRBDM, the relation between the robot's tail angle displacement and the electrical voltage's frequency ω is theoretically derived and the simulation result for the tail's angle displacement is performed.