A snail-inspired traveling-wave-driven miniature piezoelectric robot
Weiyi Wang, Jing Li, Shijing Zhang, Jie Deng, Weishan Chen, Yingxiang Liu
Abstract
The phenomenon of using traveling waves is widely observed in organisms like centipedes, stingrays, and snails. Energy is uniformly distributed through wave propagation, reducing energy loss and enhancing motion efficiency. This offers valuable guidance for designing robots. Here, we report a miniature robot emulating the traveling-wave behavior of snails. A single-frame robot is designed with a rigid square-frame structure and four piezoelectric ceramics to generate traveling waves. The robot achieves a linear speed of 12 body lengths per second (BL/s), with a volume of 27.5 × 26 × 4 mm 3 and a weight of 7.9 g. Two-dimensional planar motion is realized by connecting two single-frame robots to form a double-frame robot, achieving a linear speed of 12 BL/s, a rotational speed of 690°/s, and a load capacity of 200 g. An integrated robot, combining a customized power supply and an image acquisition system, achieves untethered motion and image perception. This work provides a valuable design reference for miniature robots.