Abstract: Chinese mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis, were chosen as the research subjects, and four bionic walking feet were designed based on the structure of dactylopodite, including cone foot, cone foot with grooves, pyramid foot and cylinder foot with grooves. Cylinder foot was the prototype for comparison. Experiments for walking feet were carried out in sand and soil with different moisture content. The characteristics of resisting subsidence, energy consumption and propulsion performance of the feet were investigated. Results show that, compared with the prototype, bionic walking feet have superior mechanical characteristics. The energy consumption of the bionic feet was lower, the intrusion energy consumption was 95.12% lower, and the extraction energy consumption was 45.88% to 91.23% lower than the prototype. For cylinder foot with grooves, the bearing force in the medium increased by 6.61% to 21.81%, and the propulsive force increased by 5.30% to 20.88% compared to the prototype. It indicates that the resisting subsidence and propulsion performance of the cylinder foot with grooves are better than the prototype.

Key words: bionic engineering, walking foot, Chinese mitten crab, mechanical characteristics, media