Characteristics of a small arbitrary walking and jumping composite soft actuator with origami structure

A small arbitrary walking and jumping actuator with a composited structure and size of 7 cm x 4 cm x 2.5 cm and mass of 5 g is proposed. An origami structure of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) membrane is designed for the main soft body, driven by shape memory alloy (SMA) springs and piezoelectric bimorphs. It has jumping, linear, and rotating motion modes. A simplified multi-faceted model by MATLAB software is established to perform a nu-merical analysis of the dynamics of jumping motion. Calculated results show that the length of the elastic belts have a directly proportional impact on the takeoff velocity, jumping legs orientation angle, shape and size of the body and air drag variably impact the jumping performance. The measured results show that the jumping height and distance are 10.3 cm and 19.8 cm, respectively, with a response time of 6.7 s at 1.4 A. The maximum rotating speed on the sandpaper and flat worktop are about 100 deg/s and 300 deg/s respectively. Its linear speed is more than 10 cm/s.

Automated summary

A small walking and jumping actuator with a composited structure has been proposed. It utilizes a polyvinyl chloride membrane and shape memory alloy springs to achieve various motion modes. Numerical analysis shows that the length of the elastic belts directly affects the motion parameters. Experimental results demonstrate that the actuator achieves high jumping height and distance, along with significant rotating and linear speeds.