The design of a new 3D print-in-place soft four-legged robots with artificial intelligence

Abstract

Soft and flexible robots are designed to change their flexibility over a wide range to perform tasks adequately in real-world applications. Current soft robots require cast moulding, high assembly effort and large actuators. Soft origami structures exhibit high levels of compliance. In this paper, we designed a new 3D print-in-place soft four-legged robot (3DSOLR). Our soft legged robot is an endurance application adapted from the soft origami zigzag gripper. This novel and innovative design are inspired by the rigid joint Theo Jansen legged robot with highly adaptive 3D print-in-place soft origami legs capable of fluid motion and even surviving drop tests. The robot mechanism consists of four soft origami flexible legs driven by two DC motors. The 3DSOLR is lightweight and semi-autonomous using two Hall effect sensors and a wireless Bluetooth module. Being 3D print-in-place using Thermoplastic polyurethane also increases its durability while having flexibility, simplicity and safety. The robot also has a gripper inspired by the mandible of male European stag beetle (Lucanus cervus). These features make this robot suitable to be used in social robotics and rescue robotics applications. The transmitter program is implemented in Bluetooth serial communication using MIT App Inventor 2 smartphone apps and a microcontroller Arduino ATMEL is used as the main controller and code in Arduino IDE. It has artificial intelligence (AI) capability with ESP32 CAM onboard which has an object classification accuracy of 95.5% using custom Edge Impulse neural network MobileNetV1 96 x 96. This AI capability enhanced the robot’s capability in object classification for grasping.