Design and Control of a New Pneumatic Quadruped Soft Robot Based on Honeycomb Structure

摘要

Inspired by the flexible structure of soft organisms, many researchers have developed different new soft robots using various flexible materials. Compared with traditional rigid robots, soft robots have a small mass, a high degree of freedom, good flexibility, and high safety of human-computer interaction. However, research on designing new types of quadruped soft robots is still a big challenge. This paper proposes an innovative design and control methodology for a pneumatic quadruped soft robot, employing a highly deformable hexagonal structure with shape-preserving material characteristics. First of all, the scheme design of the bionic soft quadruped robot. Based on the movement mechanism of quadrupeds, combined with the deformation concept of the honeycomb hexagonal chamber, the leg structure of the robot is designed, and the corresponding pneumatic driver is designed according to the driving mode, which can drive the legs to perform stretching, bending and other movements. Secondly, the mathematical modeling and finite element simulation. The deformation principle of the hexagonal chamber and the elongation of a single leg are modeled by the geometric analysis method, and then the validity of the modeling is verified by the finite element simulation method. Finally, multiple experiments show the performance of the designed quadruped robot including the static characteristics, output force, and workspace on a single leg. Besides, the control logic program was used to carry out the straight line and curve walking experiments of the quadruped robot. Thus the proposed method provides an efficient and effective design strategy for soft quadruped robots.