A Novel Soft Climbing Robot With Pneumatic Extendible Arms

This letter presents a novel soft climbing robot characterized by its light weight, flexibility, and the ability to adjust the locomotion distance by extendable arms. The robot has inflatable gripper and arms. These are controlled only by a pneumatic system. The weight of the robot is 858 g, the maximum length of the extendable arm is 740 mm, and the contraction ratio (distance between the minimum length and the maximum length/maximum length) is 88%. We evaluated its ability of locomotion by experiments in which the robot moved on a field structure consisting of pipes. The robot successfully moved continuously, and hence the effectiveness of proposed climbing method was verified.