Digital Fabrication of Bio-Inspired Robotic Modular Systems based on Biomechanics of Inching-Locomotion Caterpillars

Inching-locomotion caterpillars have biomechanical features for good performance in manipulation tasks. This research focuses on the study of kinematic chains in 2 species of the Lepidoptera family. The motion analysis of both was distributed in 8 biomechanical gait steps (BGS) named from t0 to t7 for each one. The engineering design was carried out in 2 stages, the first (2-D) was implemented with the use of CorelDraw and its manufacture in 3 mm thick MDF material, where it was obtained that the system complied with the mechanical configuration of BGS from t0 to t2 and t5 to t7, then, for the second stage (3-D) SolidWorks was used where the parametric modeling was carried out. For the manufacture of the second prototype, the FDM method was used in PLA material, to have resistant parts, for which it was defined to use the Original Prusa i3 MK3S printer. Then, in order to process the STL files, the PrusaSlicer 2.5.0 software was used. In addition, their mechanical configurations comply with BGS from t0 to t3 and t5 to t7. The Geometridae system has a maximum length of 32.5 cm and a weight of 110.53 g and the Plusiinae has a maximum length of 44 cm and a weight of 147.83 g. Finally, the bio-design thinking methodology structured and adapted to each section presented in this work was successfully implemented.