A legged soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion

Authors: B. Xia¹, J. Fu¹, H. Zhu¹, Z. Song¹, Y. Jiang¹, H. Lipson¹

¹Columbia University

Publication: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 11812–11819 (2021)

Presentation: Poster

DOI: 10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561018

Abstract

This paper presents 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.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot’s 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 in 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 agile soft robots’ development.

Paper

Citation

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@inproceedings{xia2021legged,
  title={A legged soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion},
  author={Xia, B. and Fu, J. and Zhu, H. and Song, Z. and Jiang, Y. and Lipson, H.},
  booktitle={2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
  pages={11812--11819},
  year={2021},
  organization={IEEE}
}