School of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Testing Technology for Manufacturing Process, Ministry of Education, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China.
The Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, P.R. China.
Soft Robot. 2020 Aug;7(4):500-511. doi: 10.1089/soro.2019.0070. Epub 2020 Jan 24.
Soft climbing robots have attracted much attention of researchers for their potential applications on the wall or inside the tube. However, making a soft robot climb on the outer surface of a rod or tube by agile and efficient motion has long been a challenge. Inspired by the winding climbing locomotion of arboreal snakes, a tethered pneumatic-actuated winding-styled soft rod-climbing robot that consists of two winding actuators and a telescopic actuator is proposed in this work. Based on constant curvature assumption, we develop a theoretical model to analyze the linear and bending motion of the actuators. We demonstrate that our robot can perform climbing locomotion similar to snakes, including turning around a corner along a rod, climbing a vertical rod with a maximum speed of 30.85 mm/s (0.193 body length/s), and carrying a larger payload (weight, 500 g, more than 25 times its self-weight) than existing soft climbing robots do on a vertical surface. In addition, the experimental tests exhibit the potential applications of the robot in special environments such as high-voltage cables, nuclear power plants, and underwater sites.
软体攀爬机器人因其在壁面或管道内的潜在应用而引起了研究人员的广泛关注。然而，使软体机器人通过灵活高效的运动在杆或管的外表面上攀爬一直是一个挑战。受树栖蛇类缠绕攀爬运动的启发，本工作提出了一种由两个缠绕驱动器和一个伸缩驱动器组成的 tethered 气动驱动缠绕式软杆攀爬机器人。基于恒定曲率假设，我们开发了一个理论模型来分析驱动器的线性和弯曲运动。我们证明，我们的机器人可以进行类似于蛇类的攀爬运动，包括沿着杆转弯、以最大速度 30.85 毫米/秒（0.193 体长/秒）攀爬垂直杆，以及携带比现有软体攀爬机器人更大的有效负载（重量 500 克，超过其自身重量的 25 倍）在垂直表面上。此外，实验测试展示了机器人在特殊环境（如高压电缆、核电站和水下场所）中的潜在应用。
