A Low-profile Vibration Crawling Robot Driven by A Planar Dielectric Elastomer Actuator

Abstract

Inspired by the inchworm locomotion in nature, several two-anchor crawling robots driven by the dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have been developed, which have demonstrated the clear advantages of low locomotion noise and high energy efficiency. However, due to the limitations of their locomotion principle and mechanical designs, their mobility in narrow and constrained spaces is often restricted, which severely limit their applications in the real-world, e.g. search and rescue or industrial inspections. In this work, we present a novel low-profile vibration crawling robots. Driven by a planar DEA and by incorporating a series of tilted bristles, our robot can achieve a peak forward velocity at the resonance frequency of the actuator. The crawling speed of the robot is further optimized with respect to the tilt angle of the bristle and the amplitude of the actuation voltage. The experimental results show that the robot with 60° bristles and driven at 6kV has an optimal velocity of 169.2mm-s-1 which is equivalent to 2.4 times of its body length. Furthermore, through a sequence of payload tests and results fitting, we estimate that the payload capacity of the robot is about 4. 9g, which is 1.9 times of its body mass.