Inchworm Inspired Multimodal Soft Robots With Crawling, Climbing, and Transitioning Locomotion

Although many soft robots, capable of crawling or climbing, have been well developed, integrating multimodal locomotion into a soft robot for transitioning between crawling and climbing still remains elusive. In this work, we present a class of inchworm-inspired multimodal soft crawling-climbing robots (SCCRs) that can achieve crawling, climbing, and transitioning between horizontal and vertical planes. Inspired by the inchworm’s multimodal locomotion, which depends on the “$\Omega$” deformation of the body and controllable friction force of feet, we develop the SCCR by 1) three pneumatic artificial muscles based body designed to produce “$\Omega$” deformation; 2) two negative pressure suckers adopted to generate controllable friction forces. Then a simplified kinematic model is developed to characterize the kinematic features of the SCCRs. Lastly, a control strategy is proposed to synchronously control the “$\Omega$” deformation and sucker friction forces for multimodal locomotion. The experimental results demonstrate that the SCCR can move at a maximum speed of 21 mm/s (0.11 body length/s) on horizontal planes and 15 mm/s (0.079 body length/s) on vertical walls. Furthermore, the SCCR can work in confined spaces, carry a payload of 500 g (about 15 times the self-weight) on horizontal planes or 20 g on vertical walls, and move in aquatic environments.