Mining Smartness from the Hydraulic System of Spiders: A Bioinspired Actuator for Advanced Applications

Abstract

Most animals and insects use opposing muscles, called flexors and extensors, to articulate the joints of their limbs. However, some spiders do not have extensors in some of their joints and use, instead, a simple and efficient miniaturized hydraulic system to extend their limbs. An actuator inspired by the hydraulic system of spiders, which can be embedded on adaptive structures, is investigated in robot-like configurations in this paper. Its design and characteristics are discussed and the effects of the geometrical parameters on its performance are investigated.

A unique yet technically simple type of joint allows for the high mobility of scorpion tails

“…One of the most astonishing examples, the Papuan weevil Trigonopterus oblongus evolved a screw-and-nut-like articulation between coxa and trochanter, which not only makes the leg flexible, but can also bring it into a fixed position [2,3]. Another example is the articulation of spider legs, which is partly activated by changes of hydraulic pressure and the potential adaptation of this hydraulic system to a robot has been assessed in several works [4,5].…”

The art of a hydraulic joint in a spider’s leg: modelling, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, and bio-inspired design

“…To date, the hydraulic transmission process has only been described in function, and previous studies have only been able to reproduce the driving process of the hydraulic joint of a spider in terms of functionality. Such studies have resulted in the "Smart Stick" (Menon and Lira 2006;Lira et al 2008), fluidic actuators (Spröwitz et al 2017) and soft robotics (Li et al 2011;Karakurt et al 2015) related to spider joints. Based on the nature of hydraulic transmission, it is worthwhile to explore the process and mechanism of transmission involving the internal flow of the hydraulic joint.…”

A smart hydraulic joint for future implementation in robotic structures

“…By taking inspiration from the hydraulic systems of spiders, 1 a flexible hydraulic joint suitable for being embedded on adaptive robotic structures has recently been proposed and investigated by the authors. [2][3][4][5]40 On the other hand, miniaturized hydraulic systems have been developed by several researchers for actuating anthropomorphic hand prostheses, [6][7][8][9][10][11] robotic catheters, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] self-propelling endoscopes, 18,19 macro-scale hexapod robots, [20][21][22][23] surgical robotic systems, [24][25][26] and several other devices. Different kinds of micro-actuation systems have been investigated 27,28 and several micro-pump systems have been manufactured and their performances compared.…”

“…Different kinds of micro-actuation systems have been investigated 27,28 and several micro-pump systems have been manufactured and their performances compared. 29,30 In this paper, a prototype of the flexible hydraulic flexible joint 40 is investigated and a model is derived. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the bio-inspired design; Section 3 presents the simplified model of the engineered hydraulic joint.…”