Hu Fuwen, Zhao Bingyu, Jiang Wenyu
School of Mechanical and Material Engineering, North China University of Technology, Beijing 100144, China.
Brunel London School, North China University of Technology, Beijing 100144, China.
Micromachines (Basel). 2025 Jul 25;16(8):855. doi: 10.3390/mi16080855.
This work presents a novel type of soft reconfigurable mobile robot with multimodal locomotion, which is created using a controllable magneto-elastica-reinforced composite elastomer. The rope motor-driven method is employed to modulate magnetics-mechanics coupling effects and enable the magneto-elastica-reinforced elastomer actuator to produce controllable deformations. Furthermore, the 3D-printed magneto-elastica-reinforced elastomer actuators are assembled into several typical robotic patterns: linear configuration, parallel configuration, and triangular configuration. As a proof of concept, a few of the basic locomotive modes are demonstrated including squirming-type crawling at a speed of 1.11 mm/s, crawling with turning functions at a speed of 1.11 mm/s, and omnidirectional crawling at a speed of 1.25 mm/s. Notably, the embedded magnetic balls produce magnetic adhesion on the ferromagnetic surfaces, which enables the soft mobile robot to climb upside-down on ferromagnetic curved surfaces. In the experiment, the inverted ceiling-based inverted crawling speed is 2.17 mm/s, and the inverted freeform surface-based inverted crawling speed is 3.40 mm/s. As indicated by the experimental results, the proposed robot has the advantages of a simple structure, low cost, reconfigurable multimodal motion ability, and so on, and has potential application in the inspection of high-value assets and operations in confined environments.
这项工作展示了一种新型的具有多模态运动的软可重构移动机器人，它是使用可控磁弹性增强复合弹性体制成的。采用绳索电机驱动方法来调节磁-力学耦合效应，并使磁弹性增强弹性体致动器产生可控变形。此外，3D打印的磁弹性增强弹性体致动器被组装成几种典型的机器人模式：线性配置、平行配置和三角形配置。作为概念验证，展示了一些基本的 locomotive 模式，包括以1.11毫米/秒的速度蠕动式爬行、以1.11毫米/秒的速度具有转弯功能的爬行以及以1.25毫米/秒的速度全方位爬行。值得注意的是，嵌入的磁球在铁磁表面上产生磁附着力，这使得软移动机器人能够在铁磁曲面上倒挂爬行。在实验中，基于倒置天花板的倒挂爬行速度为2.17毫米/秒，基于倒置自由曲面的倒挂爬行速度为3.40毫米/秒。实验结果表明，所提出的机器人具有结构简单、成本低、可重构多模态运动能力等优点，在高价值资产检查和受限环境作业中具有潜在应用。
