Chlorochlamys loop-like locomotion: Combining crawling and climbing robotics

Robotic prototypes for search and rescue operations tend to imitate crawling and swimming organisms such as snakes, salamanders, worms, and eels. The Chlorochlamys Chloroleucaria larvae move themselves by a unique form of loop-like body changes stabilized by their subterminal grasping tools; we call this kind of motion loop-like locomotion. By combining undulatory locomotion with loop-like locomotion, robotic prototypes may improve their efficiency and flexibility in moving through unstructured environments, while the climbing gaits may step up their gait repertoire. In our research we study the feasibility of robotic loop-like locomotion and we build robotic prototypes with the above capabilities. We model the Chlorochlamys Chloroleucaria as a multi-segment manipulator with grippers at both ends and we study the motion planning problem for loop-like locomotion under physical and environmental constraints. Extensive experimental studies demonstrate the feasibility and show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Our robotic prototype is proposed as a testbed for realizing loop-like locomotion in the real world.