Lightweight Autonomous Crawling Robot Utilizing Vacuum-Driven Self-sensing Origami Actuators for 3D Multi-Terrain Exploration

Despite tremendous progress in the development of untethered soft robots in recent yeas, autonomous untethered pneumatic robot continue to confront multifaceted challenges. These encompass the hardware integrations, meticulous pressure regulation, ground-wall-ceiling transition and real-time SLAM and motion planning in unstructured environments. This research presents a novel lightweight, autonomous crawling robot, equipped with trio parallel 3D-printed Kresling origami actuators. On the hardware, this robot cohesively integrates power and control modulars, vision systems, pneumatic systems, and angle sensors. In lower-level control, the robot leverages the contraction-twisting coupled folding characteristics of the Kresling origami pattern, realizing the robot's state propriocetion. In high-level control, the robot employs a camera for simultaneous localization and mapping, by remotely controlling and transmitting real-time images wirelessly, guiding subsequent gait planning. Experimental results demonstrate the robot's abilities of transitioning locomotion, autonomous navigation in multi-terrains, and a range of environmental exploration tasks.