脚在适应性中起着重要的作用,多才多艺,和腿生物的稳定运动。因此,一些机器人研究研究已经使用生物脚作为设计机器人脚在穿越复杂的地形的灵感。然而,到目前为止,没有机器人的脚可以让腿机器人适应,多面手,在各种弯曲的金属管上健壮地爬行,包括管道检查的平面。为了解决这个问题,我们在这里提出了一种新颖的混合刚软机器人脚设计,其灵感来自in虫的腿部形态。脚由带有电磁体的刚性部分和柔软的脚趾覆盖物组成,以增强对金属管的附着力。有限元分析,在不同的加载条件下执行,透露,由于其合规性,柔软的脚趾可以进行可恢复的变形,并适应各种弯曲的金属管和普通的金属表面。我们已经成功地实现了带软脚趾的电磁脚(EROFT)在一个尺虫启发的管道爬行机器人上的自适应,多才多艺,和稳定的运动。脚对表面的适应性是由软脚趾的固有弹性提供的,使机器人成为多功能和稳定的金属管履带。实验表明,机器人在大直径金属管上爬行成功率达到100%。拟议的混合刚软支脚(即,带柔软脚趾的电磁脚)可以以稳定有效的方式解决机器人的连续表面适应问题,无论表面曲率如何,无需手动改变机器人脚的特定表面。为此,脚的开发使机器人能够满足大型石油和天然气管道上的一系列部署要求,可用于检查各种故障和泄漏。
Feet play an important role in the adaptive, versatile, and stable locomotion of legged creatures. Accordingly, several robotic research studies have used biological feet as the inspiration for the design of robot feet in traversing complex terrains. However, so far, no robot feet can allow legged robots to adaptively, versatilely, and robustly crawl on various curved metal pipes, including flat surfaces for pipe inspection. To address this issue, we propose here a novel hybrid rigid-soft robot-foot design inspired by the leg morphology of an inchworm. The foot consists of a rigid section with an electromagnet and a soft toe covering for enhanced adhesion to a metal pipe. Finite element analysis , performed under different loading conditions, reveals that due to its compliance, the soft toe can undergo recoverable deformation with adaptability to various curved metal pipes and plain metal surfaces. We have successfully implemented electromagnetic feet with soft toes (EROFT) on an inchworm-inspired pipe crawling robot for adaptive, versatile, and stable locomotion. Foot-to-surface adaptability is provided by the inherent elasticity of the soft toe, making the robot a versatile and stable metal pipe crawler. Experiments show that the robot crawling success rate reaches 100% on large diameter metal pipes. The proposed hybrid rigid-soft feet (i.e., electromagnetic feet with soft toes) can solve the problem of continuous surface adaptation for the robot in a stable and efficient manner, irrespective of the surface curvature, without the need to manually change the robot feet for specific surfaces. To this end, the foot development enables the robot to meet a set of deployment requirements on large oil and gas pipelines for potential use in inspecting various faults and leakages.