A chameleon tongue inspired shooting manipulator with vision-based localization and preying

Chameleon tongues are extremely rapid, ultra-stretchable, compact, and can capture preys located multi-directionally. Various chameleon tongue inspired shooting manipulators have therefore been developed. Little work, however, has been studied on the multi-directional preying capability of chameleon tongues. This letter aims to present a chameleon tongue inspired fully soft shooting manipulator with the ability of capturing delicate objects in a range of directions. To this end, we present a compact sliding catapult system (SCS) that could enable the manipulator to have ballistic motions and gentle capturing capabilities. The SCS was capable of projecting to a length of 52 cm at the speed of 5.7 m·s−1, which is comparable to natural chameleon tongues. With viscoelastic gels (Polyisobutylene) attached at the tip, the manipulator can capture various delicate objects, including a leaf (0.20 g), a slice of dried tofu (6.19 g), and a balloon (0.91 g) in a tube. A chameleon inspired vision-based posture alignment platform has been built for multi-position prey capturing and proof-of-concept demonstrations were presented. The chameleon inspired multi-directional prey capturing platform is not only a successful representation of Chameleons’ prey capturing strategies but also offers an effective soft robotic manipulator for handling delicate objects in challenging environments.