Design and characteristic study of a pneumatically actuated earthworm-like soft robot

This paper describes the design and development of a pneumatically actuated soft robot which can imitate the crawling locomotion of a earthworm. A novel gait inspiring by earthworms is designed. The soft robot is consist of four soft actuators which are fabricated by casting two-component RTV (room temperature vulcanized) silicone rubber in a three-dimensional (3-D) printed customized mold. The soft actuator is composed of a cylindrical main body with a cylindrical chamber embedded and two orthohexagonal holders. The experiments show the kinematic performance and the influencing factors of the soft actuator.