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Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella

Soft robots demonstrate an impressive ability to adapt to objects and environments. However, current soft mobile robots often use a single mode of movement. This gives soft robots good locomotion performance in specific environments but poor performance in others. In this paper, we propose a leg–whe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ye, Changlong, Liu, Zhanpeng, Yu, Suyang, Fan, Zifu, Wang, Yinchao
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10377722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37504159
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics8030271
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author Ye, Changlong
Liu, Zhanpeng
Yu, Suyang
Fan, Zifu
Wang, Yinchao
author_facet Ye, Changlong
Liu, Zhanpeng
Yu, Suyang
Fan, Zifu
Wang, Yinchao
author_sort Ye, Changlong
collection PubMed
description Soft robots demonstrate an impressive ability to adapt to objects and environments. However, current soft mobile robots often use a single mode of movement. This gives soft robots good locomotion performance in specific environments but poor performance in others. In this paper, we propose a leg–wheel mechanism inspired by bacterial flagella and use it to design a leg–wheel robot. This mechanism employs a tendon-driven continuum structure to replicate the bacterial flagellar filaments, while servo and gear components mimic the action of bacterial flagellar motors. By utilizing twisting and swinging motions of the continuum structure, the robot achieves both wheeled and legged locomotion. The paper provides comprehensive descriptions and detailed kinematic analysis of the mechanism and the robot. To verify the feasibility of the robot, a prototype was implemented, and experiments were performed on legged mode, wheeled mode, and post-overturning motion. The experimental results demonstrate that the robot can achieve legged and wheeled motions. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that the robot still has mobility after overturning. This expands the applicability scenarios of the current soft mobile robot.
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spelling pubmed-103777222023-07-29 Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella Ye, Changlong Liu, Zhanpeng Yu, Suyang Fan, Zifu Wang, Yinchao Biomimetics (Basel) Article Soft robots demonstrate an impressive ability to adapt to objects and environments. However, current soft mobile robots often use a single mode of movement. This gives soft robots good locomotion performance in specific environments but poor performance in others. In this paper, we propose a leg–wheel mechanism inspired by bacterial flagella and use it to design a leg–wheel robot. This mechanism employs a tendon-driven continuum structure to replicate the bacterial flagellar filaments, while servo and gear components mimic the action of bacterial flagellar motors. By utilizing twisting and swinging motions of the continuum structure, the robot achieves both wheeled and legged locomotion. The paper provides comprehensive descriptions and detailed kinematic analysis of the mechanism and the robot. To verify the feasibility of the robot, a prototype was implemented, and experiments were performed on legged mode, wheeled mode, and post-overturning motion. The experimental results demonstrate that the robot can achieve legged and wheeled motions. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that the robot still has mobility after overturning. This expands the applicability scenarios of the current soft mobile robot. MDPI 2023-06-26 /pmc/articles/PMC10377722/ /pubmed/37504159 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics8030271 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ye, Changlong
Liu, Zhanpeng
Yu, Suyang
Fan, Zifu
Wang, Yinchao
Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella
title Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella
title_full Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella
title_fullStr Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella
title_full_unstemmed Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella
title_short Design and Motion Analysis of a Soft-Limb Robot Inspired by Bacterial Flagella
title_sort design and motion analysis of a soft-limb robot inspired by bacterial flagella
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10377722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37504159
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics8030271
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