Research On Key Technology Of Pneumatic Soft Robot With Adsorption Capacity

Compared with traditional robots,soft robots have infinite freedom as well as capabilities of continuous deformation and stronger human-computer interaction.Soft robot can complete some special tasks in the field of social services and industrial production,which is the research hotspot of robotics.Aiming at the problems such as unstable motion,limited climbing angle and imprecise control of existing soft robots,a pneumatic-driven soft robot with adsorption capability is proposed in this paper.And a series of researches have been carried out for the soft robot,including structure,theoretical model,simulation analysis,motion characteristics experiment,and deformation control experiment,which mainly involves the following works:Firstly,according to the motion requirements such as straight movement,turning and climbing,a technical scheme is proposed,which is a pneumatic-driven soft robot with adsorption capability,including driving mechanisms and adsorption mechanisms.The air cavity structure and radial expansion constraint of the drive mechanism is studied,and then the structural scheme of the adsorption mechanism is determined.The movement gait is analyzed on the basis of the research on overall structure of robot.Secondly,a deformation-driven theoretical model is established to describe the elongation and bending deformation of the soft robot,based on the analysis of the properties of hyperelastic materials.Combined with the simulation model,the deformation characteristics of driving mechanisms with three different shapes of air cavity sections and the influence of the distribution density of metal rings on the deformation of driving mechanisms are analyzed.Thirdly,working characteristics of this soft robot is experimentally studied,including the adsorption performance tests of adsorption mechanisms,the elongation and bending deformation tests of driving mechanisms,and the motion performance tests of the robot.The results indicate that the maximum elongation reaches160%,and the maximum bending angle is 24°.The maximum crawling speed of the robot can reach up to 24mm/s while the single motion cycle is determined to be 1200 ms.And stable crawling on a 45-degree slope is available.Finally,experimental research on the control of body elongation is carried out,including proportional control based on the theoretical model as well as PID control,which shows that the control accuracy of both schemes is within 1%.