A novel insect scale autonomous soft quadrupedal robot for locomotion through 3D complex terrain

Animals such as mice, cockroaches and spiders have the remarkable ability to manoeuvre through challenging cluttered natural terrain. These abilities have been inspiration for legged robotic systems. Recent research indicates that body reorientation along pathways of minimal energy is a key factor influencing such locomotion. We propose to extend this idea with hypothesizing body compliance of soft bodied animals and robots as an alternate yet equally effective strategy to squeeze through cluttered obstacles. We have developed an insect-scale, origami-based quadrupedal robot, CLARI. The robot has body compliance through exoskeletal morphology. Using a carbon fibre multilayer laminate laser micromachining technique and piezoelectric actuators, four independently two degree of freedom legs are controlled. Additional electro adhesive feet allow for controlled motion across non-level surfaces. With the compliance of the exoskeleton CLARI can passively conform to its environment. We aim to verify our hypothesis by constructing a series of insect scale robots with varying body compliance and experimentally determining the preference for body deformation vs reorientation in a given cluttered environment for identical feedforward control commands.