A novel thrown robot based on flexible structures

The research on thrown mobile robots, which attract more attentions recently, are focused on the design and manufacture of low-cost, miniature, and high tolerance to the impact forces. This paper presents a novel design based on flexible structures, which is composed of flexure hinges and structure boards, to improve the anti-impact capability of a thrown robot. The flexible structures can absorb most of the shock energy via deformation of the rubber hinges and the plastic boards. The cheap flexible structures can be combined together to form a robot platform easily and flexibly. Therefore, the overall cost of the robot can be reduced a lot. Plenty of experiments showed that the low-cost thrown robot based on flexible structures, which was 1.2kg weight, could sustain the impact loading when being dropped down from 6m height.