Pneumatically Actuated Self-Healing Bionic Crawling Soft Robot

The soft robot is composed almost entirely of flexible materials, making it highly flexible, complex environment adaptable and safe human-computer interaction. However, the soft robot is exposed to sharp objects during work, which is ease to cause damage and reduces the service life of the soft robot. In this study, we proposed a bionic earthworm crawling robot with self-healing ability, which is achieved by implanting self-healing silicone elastomer (PDMS-TFB) at key parts with Ecoflex00–30 silica gel as the main body. The PDMS-TFB (Polydimethylsiloxane- Triformylbenzene) elastomer has a high tensile property (maximum strain up to 2400%), which makes it possible to cope with the large deformations that occur during the movement of the soft robot. The soft robot uses the self-healing behavior of materials to make them recyclable. The self-repairing speed of the material can be accelerated by heating, and the performance of the soft robot after healing is almost completely recovered. Actuated by air, the earthworm robot will expand axially after being aerated (10 kPa). When inflate and deflate in designed sequence for each chamber, maximum crawling speed of the soft robot can reach 150 mm/min, meanwhile, it can stably crawl on smooth planes with different angles (maximum 45 degrees) owning to the suction cup structures. This novel strategy provides a solution to greatly improve the service life of soft robots, making them useful in wide applications in scientific research, disaster relief etc.