Actuation Frequency-dependent Automatic Behavioral Switching on Caterpillar-inspired Crawling Robot

A behavioral switch is critical for both real animals and machines to generate adaptive behavior according to the dynamics (i.e., viscoelasticity and deformability of the body) and the situation encountered. Soft-bodied robots innately have the capability since a soft-body possesses the ultimate number of degrees of freedom in the sense that anywhere of the deformable body can be bent (act as joints), compressed, extended and twisted. This paper proposes to exploit the multimodal deformability for behavioral diversity and switching the behavior by turning the actuation frequency of a motor-tendon-driven caterpillar-inspired soft-bodied robot.