Crawling and Jumping by a Deformable Robot

We describe crawling and jumping by a soft robot. Locomotion over rough terrain has been achieved mainly by rigid body systems including crawlers and leg mechanisms. This paper presents an alternative method, one that employs deformation. First, we describe the principle of crawling and jumping as performed through deformation of a robot body. Second, in a physical simulation, we investigate the feasibility of the approach. Next, we show experimentally that a prototype of a circular soft robot can crawl and jump. Finally, we describe crawling and jumping performed by a spherical deformable robot.