Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft terrestrial robots is that the robot must be soft enough to adapt to its environment, but also rigid enough to exert the required force on the ground to locomote. In this paper, we report a pneumatically driven, soft modular appendage made of silicone for a terrestrial robot capable of generating specific mechanical movement to locomote and transport loads in the desired direction. This two-segmented soft appendage uses actuation in between the joint and the lower segment of the appendage to ensure adequate rigidity to exert the required force to locomote. A prototype of a soft-rigid-bodied tethered physical robot was developed and two sets of experiments were carried out in both air and underwater environments to assess its performance. The experimental results address the effectiveness of the soft appendage to generate adequate force to navigate through various environments and our design method offers a simple, low-cost, and efficient way to develop terradynamically capable soft appendages that can be used in a variety of locomotion applications.

翻译：软体机器人具有适应环境的能力，这使得它们适用于复杂地形限制其移动的灾区及农业领域。开发软体陆地机器人的主要挑战之一是，机器人既需具备足够柔顺性以适配环境，又需保持足够刚度以对地面施加移动所需的力。本文报道了一种用于陆地机器人的气动驱动硅胶基柔性模块化附肢，该附肢能够产生特定机械运动，从而在目标方向上实现移动与负载运输。这种双段式柔性附肢通过关节与附肢下段之间的驱动，确保其具备足够的刚度以施加移动所需的作用力。我们开发了一款软硬复合结构的系缆物理机器人样机，并在空气及水下环境中进行了两组实验以评估其性能。实验结果验证了该柔性附肢在生成足够驱动力以实现多种环境导航方面的有效性，而我们的设计方法为开发具有地形适应能力的低成本、高效率柔性附肢提供了一种简洁实用的途径，可广泛应用于各类移动式应用场景。