Design and Development of a Planar Inchworm Robot

An inchworm-like robot is a mobile robot that imitates the locomotion pattern of a natural inchworm. Inchworm or snake like robots can crawl or move in highly constrained environment such as maintenance conduit for buildings and factories, and human intestines and blood vessels. In this paper, the development a planar inchworm robot based on the basic inchworm motion is presented. The motion is an extension of the basic crawling action of the inchworm but with further improvements to allow for greater flexibility and mobility for general planar motion. The unique mechanical arrangement of the actuators allows for quick change in travel direction and permits rotational movement. Pneumatic cylinders are used to achieve the motions instead of rotary motors. The robot is controlled through a personal computer with an interface card. It is showed that the proposed planar inchworm robot is able to move from a starting point to a destination within specified positional accuracy based on simple gait planning algorithm.