Locomotion of crawling robots made of smart soft composite (SSC) (ICCAS 2013)

In this study, a crawling robot belonging to soft morphing structures using a shape memory alloy (SMA) wires embedded smart soft composite (SSC) was designed and fabricated. In order to obtain a high movement speed, the active components, SMA wires, were placed to go through the whole body to increase robot stride length. Then, the performances of the prototype including deformation measurements, actuation force, loading capacity and repeatability of actuation were tested. Lastly, the locomotion of the crawling robot was evaluated and its speed was of 0.83 mm/s.