Soft pneumatic actuators for legged locomotion

Search and rescue robots are being used more frequently to access hazardous environments to assess situations and locate survivors. There are a wide range of existing mobile platforms for various situations and environments, but these robots are typically bulky, heavy or expensive, limiting their widespread and practical use in case of disaster mitigation. Also, like most robots, locomotive robots have explicit design criteria, subsequent physical parameters, and control schemes that do not leave much room for improvisation nor robustness on unknown environments. Unconventional silicone rubber-based soft pneumatic actuators (SPA) robots could offer an alternative actuation solution to such problems: these soft robots are adjustable, disposable, and easy to fabricate, naturally conforming to the unknown environment. In the paper, a palm-sized soft legged robot is proposed to verify the feasibility of such applications.