Analyses and Solutions for the Buckling of Thin and Flexible Electrostatic Inchworm Climbing Robots

• As the body of the robot has only 2.5 mm of thickness, it is more prone to buckling than any other flexible robots, making it the best example for the buckling problem.
• Based on the analyses, the paper proposes a buckling-free control strategy for the electrostatic robots.
• A prototype of climbing robot was developed to verify the analyses and solutions, weighing merely 29 g (excluding battery and control circuits). It successfully climbed up a vertical wall without buckling, carrying the payload of 0.4 N.