Bio inspired salamander robot with Pneu-Net Soft actuators – design and walking gait analysis

The research was attempted to mimic the locomotion of the salamander, which is found to be one of the main animals from an evolutionary point of view. The design of the limb and body was started with the parametric studies of pneumatic network (Pneu-Net). Pneu-Net is a pneumatically operated soft actuator that bends when compressed fluid is passed inside the chamber. Finite Element Analysis software, ANSYS, was used to evaluate the height of the chamber, number of chambers and the gap between chambers for both limb and body of the soft mechanism. The parameters were decided based on the force generated by the soft actuators. The assembly of the salamander robot was then exported to MATLAB for simulating the locomotion of the robot in a physical environment. Sine-based controller was used to simulate the robot model and the fastest locomotion of the salamander robot was identified at 1 Hz frequency, 0.3 second of signal delay for limb actuator and negative π phase difference for every contralateral side of the limbs. Shin-Etsu KE-1603, a hyper elastic material, was used to build the salamander robot and a series of experiments were conducted to record the bending angle, the respective generated force in soft actuators and the gait speed of the robot. The developed salamander robot was able to walk at 0.06774 m/s, following an almost identical pattern to the simulation.