Salamanderbot

Below is from: Y. Sun et al., "Salamanderbot: A soft-rigid composite continuum mobile robot to traverse complex environments," 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Paris, France, 2020, pp. 2953-2959, doi: 10.1109/ICRA40945.2020.9196790.

"Soft robots are theoretically well-suited to rescue and exploration applications where their flexibility allows for the traversal of highly cluttered environments. However, most existing mobile soft robots are not fast or powerful enough to effectively traverse three dimensional environments. In this paper, we introduce a new mobile robot with a continuously deformable slender body structure, the SalamanderBot, which combines the flexibility and maneuverability of soft robots, with the speed and power of traditional mobile robots. It consists of a cable-driven bellows-like origami module based on the Yoshimura crease pattern mounted between sets of powered wheels. The origami structure allows the body to deform as necessary to adapt to complex environments and terrains, while the wheels allow the robot to reach speeds of up to 303.1 mm/s (2.05 body-length/s). Salamanderbot can climb up to 60-degree slopes and perform sharp turns with a minimum turning radius of 79.9 mm (0.54 body-length)."

Additional Specs

• Three N20 gear DC motors (gear ratio 1:150) are bolted on the bottom side of the control circuit board to actuate each module.
• These motors have 3-D printed spools on their output shafts, which are connected to nylon fishing lines as cables.
• The origami structure has a 7.311 Nm/rad (0.128 Nm/degree) torsional stiffness while being capable of bending in two directions and changing arc-length down to a fully collapsed state.
• The module is capable of passively supporting a 1-kg mass at its tip, or 4 additional serially connected modules, bending approximately 6 degrees.