Bioinspired Segment Robot with Earthworm-like Plane Locomotion

In this paper, a miniaturized segment robot using solenoids is developed to mimic the plane locomotion of earthworms. The bioinspired robot is composed of five segmented bodies, and one segment has two solenoid actuators. This robot can move linearly and it can also turn due to the pair of solenoid actuators that facilitate the earthworm-like peristaltic locomotion. We have designed a miniaturized solenoid with a permanent magnet plunger in order to increase the total electromagnetic force. A theoretical analysis is performed to predict the linear and turning motions of each segment, and the optimal profiles of input signals are obtained for fast locomotion. Experiments are then conducted to determine the linear and turning motions of the segment robot. It takes about 0.5 s for the five segments to complete one cycle of the peristaltic locomotion. In experiments, the segment robot is shown to have the linear and angular velocities of 27.2 mm·s−1 (0.13 body-length per second) and 2 degrees per second, respectively.