Design of a Non-Actuator Soft Gripper for a Chameleon-Like Robot

Four-legged robots are terrestrial mobile robots widely applied in tasks of navigation that imply complex mobility, the difficulty of obstacle avoidance, efficient energy management, or handling the speed of motion. In previous work, we designed and implemented a prototype of a robot inspired by the biomechanics of the chameleon, for future applications in rescue and maintenance. But, the legs of the prototype slip into the contact surface, resulting in the diminishing of the locomotion performance. Hence, it is necessary to add a gripper in the tip of the legs, like a prehensile hand, for avoiding relative sliding between the legs and the surface. Thus, in this paper, we propose the first soft gripper designed for the chameleon-like robot. The key feature of the gripper is its activation without any actuator due to size restrictions and the prevention of using pneumatic or hydraulic actuators. To validate the proposal, we simulate the gripper and we run a finite element analysis, providing us insights into the soft gripper model. © 2021 IEEE.