Carpie: A soft, mechanicallyreconfigurable worm robot Soft robots are a burgeoning archetype in robotics due to their ability to perform intricate movements easily and seamlessly. They serve as an ideal concept for realistically emulating animal movements. However, the majority of soft robots today are unable to vary their motions due to the coupled interaction of the nature of their kinematics and structural composition. We therefore created Carpie, a robotic caterpillar adapted from a modular, pneumatic actuator. Carpie is designed to perform a variety of caterpillar movements by tuning its mechanical structure through physical reconfiguration. The robot has a completely soft body that enables a variety of movements and contortions into different shapes, making Carpie is perhaps the perfect example to showcase a soft robotxe2x80x99s aptness for animal mimicry. We analyzed the robotxe2x80x99s control aspect. Its capabilities were measured by performing gait velocity studies on three different configurations. Each configuration was executed by applying various modules on Carpiexe2x80x99s structure without fully refabricating the entire assembly. We also analyzed the accompanying change in the robotxe2x80x99s maximum height during gait. Finally, we demonstrate how physical reconfiguration was able to radically alter Carpiexe2x80x99s movement, allowing it to perform a turning motion.

A Multimodal Soft CrawlingClimbing Robot with the Controllable Horizontal Plane to Slope Transition * Most of the existing soft locomotive robots are capable of moving on horizontal planes and smallangled slopes, but few of them can accomplish the largeangled slope climbing or wall climbing. We introduce an inchworm inspired soft crawlingclimbing robot capable of continuous motion from a horizontal plane to a slope of up to 75 degrees and it can perform multiple locomotion including crawling, climbing, and the transition between them. This soft crawlingclimbing robot is powered by three pneumatic actuators connected in series that deforms with two degrees of freedom, negative pressure sucker feet that generate periodical adhesion, and a semiautomatic controlling system synchronizing the body shape and anchoring of the feet. The robot mimics the body deformation and feet anchoring pattern exhibited by inchworms and can be applied in inspection, surveillance, and rescuing.