Structural design and control of snake-like soft magnetorheological fluid robot

Rigid robots have made significant progress in design, manufacturing, and control. In contrast, soft robots, based on flexible materials, exhibit robust environmental adaptability, excellent biological interaction capability, and outstanding safety advantages. In the field of soft robotics, magnetic actuation technology demonstrates outstanding overall performance, featuring fast response, programmability, remote controllability, and powerful driving force. Currently, magnetic control in soft robots primarily focuses on the study of magnetic elastomers. Despite possessing a certain loadbearing capacity, there is room for improvement in deformation capabilities, i.e., environmental adaptability. Magnetorheological fluid (MRF), as a novel smart material, exhibits Newtonian fluid characteristics in the absence of magnetic field and Bingham body characteristics when subjected to a magnetic field. Soft robots employing this unique property of MRF hold potential applications in biomedical and flexible interaction fields. The study presents the design of an innovative soft robotic system centered around magnetorheological fluid as the principal smart material. A control system has been engineered to align with the specific operational environments of the robot, and a tangible experimental platform has been established to facilitate testing and validation.