Six-legged crawling soft robot: NOBIYAKA

In recent years, soft robotics composed of soft silicone rubber have attracted significant attention, as they can adapt to various unknown environments owing to their flexible bodies, resulting into a variety of robots. In our previous work, we focused on robots that operate in real complex environments, such as rescue robots, agriculture robots, and contracting robots, and developed various flexible robots such as octopus-like manipulators, pipe-climbing robots, and wall-climbing robots. In this study, we aimed to develop a multi-legged soft robot that can move in various types of surfaces, and then we employed a layered structure for the robot body to assemble it easily. We developed an actual robot and conducted experiments to confirm its mobility in three environments: a horizontal board, pebbles, and water. As a result, we confirmed that the desired crawling motion was realized and the proposed robot could move in various types of surfaces by using the dynamics of its soft body. Additionally, this study confirmed that the designed soft robot works as an integrated system, that is, the soft body simultaneously works as a structure, actuator, sensor, and controller.