Initial Development of an Amphibious Robot with Flexible Straight Flipper-Legs

Amphibious robots that can conquer various complex environments is necessary for field exploration, disaster rescue and military applications. This paper introduces an amphibious robot with six simple flexible straight flipper legs and a serious of experiments to explore the locomotion performance of the robot in different environments. The flexible straight flipper-legs can bend into curved legs during terrestrial locomotion and propel underwater as flexible flippers. Forward velocity and cost of transport of the robot are measured during the locomotion on grass terrain, hard flat terrain, sandy terrain and underwater, respectively. Besides, we have also investigated how the stiffness of flexible flipper legs, the gaits, and the rotational speed of the leg affect the locomotion performance of the robot. The experimental result reveals that the robot with such simple flexible flipper-legs is able to walk on different terrestrial environments and swim underwater with a reasonable velocity and energy consumption. Besides, the stiffness and the rotational speed of the flexible legs leaves a heavy influence on the locomotion performance of the robot walking on grassland.