mCLARI

[IROS Best Paper Award on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics]

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS55552.2023.10341588

CU Press Coverage: https://www.colorado.edu/mechanical/2023/10/31/jayaram-and-team-win-iros-best-paper-award-safety-security-and-rescue-robotics

Soft compliant microrobots have the potential to deliver significant societal impact when deployed in applications such as search and rescue. In this research we present mCLARI, a body compliant quadrupedal microrobot of 20mm neutral body length and 0.97g, improving on its larger predecessor, CLARI. This robot has four independently actuated leg modules with 2 degrees of freedom, each driven by piezoelectric actuators. The legs are interconnected in a closed kinematic chain via passive body joints, enabling passive body compliance for shape adaptation to external constraints. Despite scaling its larger predecessor down to 60 % in length and 38% in mass, mCLARI maintains 80% of the actuation power to achieve high agility. Additionally, we demonstrate the new capability of passively shape-morphing mCLARI – omnidirectional laterally confined locomotion – and experimentally quantify its running performance achieving a new unconstrained top speed of ∼3 bodylengths/s (60 mms−1 ). Leveraging passive body compliance, mCLARI can navigate through narrow spaces with a body compression ratio of up to 1.5× the neutral body shape.