A miniaturized wall-climbing segment robot inspired by caterpillar locomotion.
- Citation data:
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Bioinspiration & biomimetics, ISSN: 1748-3190, Vol: 12, Issue: 4, Page: 046003
- Publication Year:
- 2017
- Repository URL:
- http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/aa728c/meta
- PMID:
- 28492374
- DOI:
- 10.1088/1748-3190/aa728c
- Author(s):
- Publisher(s):
- Tags:
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; Engineering; climbing robot; bioinspiration; caterpillar; gecko adhesive pad; segment robot; solenoid
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article description
Caterpillars are very successful soft-bodied climbers that navigate in complex environments. This paper develops a multi-segmented robot climbing on vertical surfaces using dry adhesive pads, inspired by caterpillar locomotion. The miniaturized robot consists of four segments, and each segment uses a solenoid actuator with a permanent magnet plunger. The head and body segments adapt a novel mechanism and Scott-Russell linkages to generate a bi-directional plane motion using one solenoid actuator, resulting to reliable attaching and peeling motions of gecko pads. A tail is also attached at the back of the last segment to avoid falling or exhibiting unstable motion. Gecko-inspired adhesive pads are fabricated from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with the area of 20 mm × 10 mm. We have conducted experiments on the locomotion performance of the segment robot climbing vertical surfaces for two types of locomotion, achieving the fast and stable climbing motion.