Abstract
Underwater equipment is critical for environmental applications. Conventional rigid underwater manipulators require considerable size and weight, hindering the application of underwater operations. Origami actuators have proven to be an effective technique and have been used in many applications. In this work, I propose a bionic soft amphibious robot based on a Z-shaped actuator and a twisted tower actuator. The soft robot can be fabricated by 3D printing technology and has a simple structure for easy operation. Two different types of programmable origami actuators are designed and fabricated, i.e., Z-shaped actuator and torsion tower actuator. Z-shaped actuator is used for the rear leg which enables the movement of the frog. Meanwhile, the torsion tower shaped actuator is used for the front legs to rotate the joints and movement on land. We designed a novel hybrid structure (rigid frame + soft actuator) gripper using the Z-shaped actuator to improve the gripping performance. And we use bellows to make the buoyancy unit of the soft robot. The origami actuators and were tested through a series of experiments, which showed that the robot was able to efficiently move and perform grasping maneuvers in water and on land. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of these actuators in generating the desired motions and provide insight into the potential of applying 3D printed origami actuators to develop soft robots with bionic capabilities.
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Acknowledgement
This research was supported in part by the Research Project of State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration (MSV202319) and the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission for Advanced Equipment (SKLMT-MSKFKT-202327).
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Yang, Y., Zheng, H., Xie, Y., Jiang, P., Li, Y. (2025). A Soft Amphibious Robot with Buoyancy Control and Underwater Manipulation Capabilities. In: Lan, X., Mei, X., Jiang, C., Zhao, F., Tian, Z. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 15203. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-0795-2_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-0795-2_24
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