Design and Modelling of Flex-Rigid Soft Robot for Flipping Locomotion

This paper presents design and modelling of a flex-rigid soft robot for flipping locomotion. The proposed robot is made into a strip shape and consists of three rigid limbs connected by two active flexible hinges. Its flipping locomotion is achieved by active folding and developing of the hinges. To validate its locomotion ability, we build a state-space model to simulate its dynamics, which is compared with the experimental data. The results show that the proposed flex-rigid robot can perform flipping locomotion with average velocity of 59mm/s in simulation and 60mm/s in experiment, and the model can predict its movement effectively.