The driving mechanism research of six unit soft robots

Abstract

When the rigid-driven mode robots of wheeled, legged, crawler types operates in the narrow and non-structured environment, the energy consumption increase and the robot is difficult to pass through the obstacles which are smaller than itself. The sea cucumber, echinoderm animal, makes use of their body to produce variation-driven characteristics, like hydrostatic skeleton driving, which provides the resolving idea for this paper. In this paper we provide an in-depth study of deformation driven by the sea cucumber itself, establish mathematical model of pneumatic motor, design non-contact bionic driving structures, study on driving unit reduction and eventually, design six-unit software robots. Enabling them through the change of their own shapes, to pass through the holes which smaller than themselves. The Pulse Width Modulation circuit is used to control a nonlinear position servo system. The prototype of soft robot has been finished to prove that the theory we analyzed is right.