An earthworm-inspired soft crawling robot controlled by friction

Abstract

We present the design, fabrication, modeling and feedback control of an earthworm-inspired soft robot that crawls on flat surfaces by actively changing the frictional forces acting on its body. Earthworms are segmented and composed of repeating units called metameres. During crawling, muscles enable these metameres to interact with each other in order to generate peristaltic waves and retractable setae (bristles) produce variable traction. The proposed robot crawls by replicating these two mechanisms, employing pneumatically-powered soft actuators. Using the notion of controllable subspaces, we show that locomotion would be impossible for this robot in the absence of friction. Also, we present a method to generate feasible control inputs to achieve crawling, perform exhaustive numerical simulations of feedforward-controlled locomotion, and describe the synthesis and implementation of suitable real-time friction-based feedback controllers for crawling. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through analysis, simulations and locomotion experiments.