Gait-Planning-Based Path Planning for Crocodile-Inspired Pneumatic Soft Robots

In many cases, soft robots with their inherent flexibility, ease of interaction, and high adaptability in complex environments, receive widespread attention. Among them, gait planning is a key technology to ensure the performance of soft robots. This paper proposes a gait-planning-based path planning method for crocodile-inspired pneumatic soft robots. Based on the crocodile-inspired pneumatic soft robots, the motion characteristics of the robot with different gaits are analyzed. Then, a path planning method using A* algorithm is proposed according to the environmental characteristics of road width, obstacles, and other road information. The experimental environment is built independently to complete robot path planning and gait selection and verify the effectiveness of the proposed gait-planning-based path planning method.