Bioinspired segment robot with earthworm-like plane locomotion

Song, Chang-Woo; Lee, Dongjun; Lee, Seung-Yop

doi:10.1016/s1672-6529(16)60302-5

Cited by 33 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The different parts in the material have to expand and contract alternately. In the field of soft‐robotics, this peristaltic is controlled externally through, for example, magnets [ 37 ] or motors [ 5,36 ] and results in complex technical solutions. With our approach and the material shown in Figure 5, we can transfer this functionality directly in the material and control it through the input load.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Shape Morphing Behavior through Local Programming of Mechanical Metamaterials

et al. 2021

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Shape morphing implicates that a specific condition leads to a morphing reaction. The material thus transforms from one shape to another in a predefined manner. In this paper, not only the target shape but rather the evolution of the material's shape as a function of the applied strain is programmed. To rationalize the design process, concepts from informatics (processing functions, for example, Poisson's ratio (PR) as function of strain: ν = f(ε) and if‐then‐else conditions) will be introduced. Three types of shape morphing behavior will be presented: (1) achieving a target shape by linearly increasing the amplitude of the shape, (2) filling up a target shape in linear steps, and (3) shifting a bulge through the material to a target position. In the first case, the shape is controlled by a geometric gradient within the material. The filling kind of behavior was implemented by logical operations. Moreover, programming moving hillocks (3) requires to implement a sinusoidal function εy = sin (εx) and an if‐then‐else statement into the unit cells combined with a global stiffness gradient. The three cases will be used to show how the combination of mechanical mechanisms as well as the related parameter distribution enable a programmable shape morphing behavior in an inverse design process.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Shape Morphing Behavior through Local Programming of Mechanical Metamaterials

et al. 2021

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“…By shortening the longitudinal muscles at one side and meanwhile stretching the longitudinal muscles at the other side, the earthworm is able to bend its body and turn (Figure 1(b)) (Alexander, 2003). Inspired by this observation, several earthworm-like robots capable of performing planar locomotion have been designed and prototyped (Omori et al, 2009; Seok et al, 2013; Song et al, 2016; Yuk et al, 2011). For example, Omori et al (2009) developed a four-segment earthworm-like underground explorer robot, where each segment is able to extend/contract or bend, controlled by three independent servomotor arms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With specified wave-like rules, the robot is able to turn on a plane surface or carry out rectilinear locomotion. Other examples include the following: a solenoid-based earthworm-like robot (Song et al, 2016), whose rectilinear and turning motions are generated by the in-phase and out-of-phase actuations of the solenoid pair; and earthworm-like robots actuated by SMAs, where the steering or turning are achieved by applying different voltages to different SMA wires (Yuk et al, 2011), or by adding additional longitudinal actuators that could bend the robot body to the intended direction (Seok et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite achieving effective planar locomotion, the gaps between the current robots and people’s expectation remain large. In terms of bio-inspired modeling, the earthworm’s body usually consists of more than 100 segments, and a metameric robot with more segments would be more flexible in motion; however, the current robot body always consists of a relatively small number of segments (e.g., fewer than eight [Nakamura and Iwanaga, 2008; Omori et al, 2009; Song et al, 2016]), which severely limits their planar locomotion performance. In terms of control, if the number of robot segments is significantly increased, the aforementioned direct actuation-assignment approach would make it challenging to obtain all possible gaits, which as a result calls for efforts in developing a generic robot model with large number of segments and a systematic approach to generate all possible locomotion gaits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Planar locomotion of earthworm-like metameric robots

Zhan

Fang

et al. 2019

The International Journal of Robotics Research

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The goal of this research is to develop a generic earthworm-like locomotion robot model consisting of a large number of segments in series and based on which to systematically investigate the generation of planar locomotion gaits and their correlation with a robot’s locomotion performance. The investigation advances the state-of-the-art by addressing some fundamental but largely unaddressed issues in the field. These issues include (a) how to extract the main shape and deformation characteristics of the earthworm’s body and build a generic model, (b) how to coordinate the deformations of different segments such that steady-state planar locomotion can be achieved, and (c) how different locomotion gaits would qualitatively and quantitatively affect the robot’s locomotion performance, and how to evaluate them. Learning from earthworms’ unique morphology characteristics, a generic kinematic model of earthworm-like metameric locomotion robots is developed. Left/right-contracted segments are introduced into the model to achieve planar locomotion. Then, this paper proposes a gait-generation algorithm by mimicking the earthworm’s retrograde peristalsis wave, with which all admissible locomotion gaits can be constructed. We discover that when controlled by different gaits, the robot would exhibit four qualitatively different locomotion modes, namely, rectilinear, sidewinding, circular, and cycloid locomotion. For each mode, kinematic indexes are defined and examined to characterize their locomotion performances. For verification, a proof-of-concept robot hardware is designed and prototyped. Experiments reveal that with the proposed robot model and the employed gait controls, locomotion of different modes can be effectively achieved, and they agree well with the theoretical predictions.

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“…By exploiting the stiffness disparity of the six legs, different advances of the sides of the insect-like robot is generated and then yaw rotation is realized. In contrast, to achieve the advance difference between the two sides of robots, the earthworm-like plane robot proposed by Song 23 turns in a different way. Each of its body segments has two solenoid actuators and the angular displacement is produced by the unsynchronized motion of the solenoid pair.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A vibration-driven planar locomotion robot—Shell

Zhan¹,

Xu²,

Fang³

2018

Robotica

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SUMMARYThis paper reports the design, analysis, and control of a miniature vibration-driven planar locomotion robot called Shell. A vibration-driven system is able to achieve locomotion based on internal oscillations and anisotropic friction forces. In this robot design, two parallel oscillators are employed to provide propelling forces, and a blade-like support is designed to generate anisotropic frictional contact with the ground. If the two parallel oscillators are of different frequencies and amplitudes, two-dimensional locomotion of the robot can be achieved. To predict the robot's planar locomotion, a dynamic model is developed. Controlling the robot's locomotion and especially, the locomotion modes can be achieved by adjusting the vibration frequencies of the two internal oscillators. Experimental results show that Shell can be controlled to move rectilinearly and along circles with certain curvatures. In addition, by combining these basic trajectories, Shell can move freely on a horizontal plane.

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Bioinspired segment robot with earthworm-like plane locomotion

Cited by 33 publications

References 21 publications

Designing Shape Morphing Behavior through Local Programming of Mechanical Metamaterials

Designing Shape Morphing Behavior through Local Programming of Mechanical Metamaterials

Planar locomotion of earthworm-like metameric robots

A vibration-driven planar locomotion robot—Shell

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