Design and Testing of a Razor Clam-Inspired Underwater Soft Robot

The research on underwater bionic soft robots and their propulsion modes is currently a hot topic in the field of robotics. Some types of bivalve mollusks, such as razor clams, can swim for escape or migration through the rapid telescopic whipping of their hatchet feet and jet propulsion. Aiming at this unique telescopic whipping and catapulting motion mode of razor clams, a bionic hatchet foot was designed based on the structure of a wire-driven large-pitch elliptical helical spring. A prototype of a catapult-type bionic razor clam underwater soft robot was designed using the scheme of “cam groove-bolt-pulley block-wire-driven bionic hatchet foot”, realizing the underwater swimming motion that imitates the telescopic whipping of razor clams, and the swimming speed reaches 9 cm/s. This provides new ideas for the design of new types of underwater bionic soft robots.