Tasering Twin Soft Robot: A Multimodal Soft Robot Capable of Passive Flight and Wall Climbing

The application of Soft Crawling Robots (SCRs) to real-world scenarios remains a grand challenge due to their limited deployment time to reach the target and accessibility to difficult-to-reach environments by any obstacles. To overcome these limitations, a novel multimodal Tasering Twin Soft Robot (TTSR), carrying two SCRs, capable of 1) passive flight and 2) wall climbing to a desired location by deploying SCRs once reached the target is proposed. For satisfying both tasks, reconfigurable design of SCRs using a novel bistable mechanism and detaching mechanism based on a shape-memory alloy for deploying SCRs is proposed. Each SCR is driven by two dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA) and three electroadhesive (EA) feet. To demonstrate multimodality, the TTSR with two SCRs is launched by pneumatic pressure and flown over an obstacle. While flying, the SCRs are folded compactly to reduce the air drag and perch on a wall 3 m away (50 times of body length) within 0.64 s. After perching, the SCRs reconfigure themselves for crawling and separated from each other. After that, the SCRs crawl, performing planar motion, and reach predefined locations on the wall. Moreover, the SCR can move across 15 degrees-slope dihedral surfaces and inverted surface.

Automated summary

The article proposes a novel multimodal Tasering Twin Soft Robot (TTSR)，which is capable of both passive flight and wall climbing by deploying Soft Crawling Robots (SCRs). The SCRs use a reconfigurable design with bistable mechanism and shape-memory alloy-based detaching mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate that the TTSR performs well in both flying and climbing tasks, overcoming difficult-to-reach obstacles.