The work of our PhD student JOnathan TIrado, “Earthworm-Inspired Soft Skin Crawling Robot”, is published open access in Advanced Science. Congratulations, Jonathan!
Earthworm-inspired modular artificial skins are integrated into a soft linear actuator to investigate the effect of friction anisotropy on limbless locomotion. The skins feature stiff bristles in different arrangements on a soft shell fabricated using multi-material silicone casting. Comprehensive experiments reveal the role of bristle arrangements and density, stroke, and actuator geometry on the robot’s locomotion speed.
Tirado J., Do C.D., Moisson de Vaux J., Jørgensen J., Rafsanjani A. (2024) Earthworm-Inspired Soft Skin Crawling Robot, Advanced Science, 2400012.