Design and control of thermal SMA based small crawling robot mimicking C. elegans

Abstract

This paper presents a design of a thermal SMA based simple small-sized and low-weight crawling robot, mimicking the crawling motion mechanism of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Properties of the thermal SMA are similar to those of C. elegans muscle, which enables us to generate biologically relevant undulating motions. Each of 12 body segments composed of a pair of actuators is designed to be serially connected via a link that includes a motion control unit. Microcontroller is used to implement a simple sequential mode-based motion control scheme. Computer simulation and experimental results with a four segment prototype demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed robot design and control mechanism.