Design and Fabrication of Terrestrial Walking Robot Using PVDF/PVP/PSSA blend membrane based Ionic Polymer Metal Composite Actuator

This paper describes a terrestrial walking robot using poly-vinylidene fluoride (PVDF) / polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) / polystyrene sulfuric acid (PSSA) blend membrane based ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC). The proposed IPMC actuator based on PVDF/PVP/PSSA polymer mixture of ratio 30/15/55 showed better performance than that of Nafionbased IPMC actuator at low DC voltages. A small scale IPMC was fabricated and employed in this study to sustain and drive the walking robot with sufficient force and displacement. Finally, a terrestrial walking robot (1.3g) with four IPMC legs was designed and fabricated and it showed the walking motion on the ground at speed 0.48 mm/s.