A Reconfigurable Crawling Robot Driven by Electroactive Artificial Muscle

In nature, inchworms can move freely on uneven terrains where conventional wheeled or tracked robots cannot. Emerging soft actuation technologies such as dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) offer a new approach for inchworm-inspired robot designs thanks to their large actuation strain and inherent compliance. In this work, we present a reconfigurable inchworm-inspired crawling robot driven by DEAs that demonstrates two different crawling modes: vibrational crawling and two-anchor crawling. This modular design combines the advantages of fast speed through the vibrational crawling motion and payload transportation capability of the two-anchor crawling motion. A single vibrating module shows a fast locomotion speed of 0.9 body length / second. When two of the robot modules are configured into a two-anchor crawling mode, this new configuration can carry a payload of up to 35% its body weight at a slower speed.