A Legged Soft Robot Platform for Dynamic Locomotion

11/13/2020

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by   Boxi Xia, et al.

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We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol. soft body and soft legs were 3D printed with gyroid infill using a flexible material, enabling it to conform to the environment and passively stabilize during locomotion on multi-terrain environments. In addition, we simulated the robot in a real-time soft body simulation. With tuned gaits in simulation, the real robot can locomote at a speed of 0.9 m/s (2.5 body length/second), substantially faster than most untethered legged soft robots published to date. We hope this platform, along with its verified simulator, can catalyze the development of soft robotics.