Tortoises walk on land by alternately moving its legs and carry their shells above the ground. When filled with compressed air, the BionicTurtleWalker simultaneously pushes its diagonally positioned legs downwards and pushes itself forwards - just like its natural model. At the heart of the BionicTurtleWalker is a pneumatic logic module developed by the Plant Biomechanics Group of the Botanic Garden Freiburg and the "Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS)" Cluster of Excellence at the University of Freiburg.
Pneumatic logic module
This control center” of the turtle takes over the tasks that are otherwise performed by valves and electrical controls in pneumatic systems. This allows it to switch the movements of the four legs precisely and only requires one tubing connection to the outside for the compressed air supply.
The pneumatic logic modules developed have several advantages over conventional systems. They consist of two valve chambers with which Boolean operations can be carried out.
Thanks to their design, they can be additively manufactured directly from flexible material and operated with low pneumatic pressure, which greatly reduces production costs, system complexity, and operating costs.
"Pneumatic logic control opens up new areas of application for completely flexible soft robots where classic, electrically controlled systems would fail.”
Dr. Falk Tauber, Cluster of Excellence livMatS at the University of Freiburg