Gait-optimized locomotion of wave-driven soft sheets
Name
c9sm02103e.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
4.16 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
04294c3763aae50321255c1d38cc40bf
Author(s)
Miller, Pearson Whitehead
Dunkel, Joern
Date Issued
March 2020
Journal
Soft Matter
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Citation
Miller, Pearson W. and Jorn Dunkel. "Gait-optimized locomotion of wave-driven soft sheets." Soft Matter, 2020,16, 3991-3999 © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Inspired by the robust locomotion of limbless animals in a range of environments, the development of soft robots capable of moving by localized swelling, bending, and other forms of differential growth has become a target for soft matter research over the last decade. Engineered soft robots exhibit a wide range of morphologies, but theoretical investigations of soft robot locomotion have largely been limited to slender bodied or one-dimensional examples. Here, we demonstrate design principles regarding the locomotion of two-dimensional soft materials driven by morphoelastic waves along a dry substrate. Focusing on the essential common aspects of many natural and man-made soft actuators, a continuum model is developed which links the deformation of a thin elastic sheet to surface-bound excitation waves. Through a combination of analytic and numerical methods, we investigate the relationship between induced active stress and self-propulsion performance of self-propelling sheets driven by FitzHugh-Nagumo type chemical waves. Examining the role of both sheet geometry and terrain geography on locomotion, our results can provide guidance for the design of more efficient soft crawling devices.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 unported license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/c9sm02103e
