TY - JOUR
T1 - A Mole-Inspired Scratch-Digging Robot for Granular Media Traversal
AU - Liu, Jiabin
AU - Liang, Zhaofeng
AU - Zhu, Haifei
AU - Guan, Yisheng
AU - Xu, Kun
AU - Ding, Xilun
AU - Zhang, Tao
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2026/7/1
Y1 - 2026/7/1
N2 - This letter proposes a mole-inspired scratch-digging robot to investigate four-limb subsurface locomotion in granular media. The robot integrated a conical head, a rigid torso, a hybrid crank-rocker and crank-slider forelimb that reproduces scratch-digging strokes, and a two-degree-of-freedom (DOF) closed-chain five-bar hindlimb for propulsion. The forelimb was optimized in ADAMS using a sequential quadratic programming algorithm to enlarge the toe-tip excavation envelope, increasing the excavated area by 33.1% and yielding a clearer retraction phase. For the hindlimb, Bézier-parameterized end-point trajectories were adopted, and link lengths were optimized via particle swarm optimization simulation, by which the reachable workspace was expanded by 15.22%. A prototype with an embedded motion controller was built (193 × 96 × 58 mm, 411 g). A traversal distance of 359 mm was achieved in loose granular media, and stable semi-buried progression was demonstrated in a denser lunar-regolith simulant using a sequenced gait.
AB - This letter proposes a mole-inspired scratch-digging robot to investigate four-limb subsurface locomotion in granular media. The robot integrated a conical head, a rigid torso, a hybrid crank-rocker and crank-slider forelimb that reproduces scratch-digging strokes, and a two-degree-of-freedom (DOF) closed-chain five-bar hindlimb for propulsion. The forelimb was optimized in ADAMS using a sequential quadratic programming algorithm to enlarge the toe-tip excavation envelope, increasing the excavated area by 33.1% and yielding a clearer retraction phase. For the hindlimb, Bézier-parameterized end-point trajectories were adopted, and link lengths were optimized via particle swarm optimization simulation, by which the reachable workspace was expanded by 15.22%. A prototype with an embedded motion controller was built (193 × 96 × 58 mm, 411 g). A traversal distance of 359 mm was achieved in loose granular media, and stable semi-buried progression was demonstrated in a denser lunar-regolith simulant using a sequenced gait.
KW - Mole-inspired robot
KW - granular locomotion
KW - mechanism design
KW - scratch-digging mole
KW - structural optimization
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105039295490
U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2026.3693937
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2026.3693937
M3 - 文章
AN - SCOPUS:105039295490
SN - 2377-3766
VL - 11
SP - 8212
EP - 8219
JO - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
IS - 7
ER -