High-speed locomotion of animals gives them tremendous advantages in exploring, hunting, and escaping from predators in varying environments. Enlightened by the fast-running gait of mammals like cheetahs and wolves, we designed and fabricated a single-servo-driving untethered soft robot that is capable of galloping at a speed of 313 mm/s or 1.56 body length per second (BL/s), 5.2 times and 2.6 times faster than the reported fastest predecessors in mm/s and BL/s, respectively, in literature. An in-plane prestressed hair clip mechanism (HCM) made up of semi-rigid materials like plastic is used as the supporting chassis, the compliant spine, and the muscle force amplifier of the robot at the same time, enabling the robot to be rapid and strong. The influence of factors including actuation frequency, substrates, tethering/untethering, and symmetric/asymmetric actuation is explored with experiments. Based on previous work, this paper further demonstrated the potential of HCM in addressing the speed problem of soft robots.

翻译：动物的高速运动使其在探索、捕猎及躲避天敌时具备显著优势。受猎豹、狼等哺乳动物快速奔跑步态的启发，我们设计并制造了一种由单个舵机驱动的无绳软体机器人，其奔跑速度可达313毫米/秒（即每秒1.56倍体长），分别比文献报道的最快同类机器人快5.2倍（毫米/秒）和2.6倍（体长/秒）。采用由半刚性材料（如塑料）制成的平面预加载发夹机构（HCM）同时作为机器人的支撑底盘、柔性脊柱及肌肉力放大器，使机器人兼具高速与高强度的特性。通过实验探究了驱动频率、基底类型、有绳/无绳状态及对称/非对称驱动等因素的影响。基于前期工作，本文进一步展示了HCM在解决软体机器人速度问题上的潜力。