Highly Deformable 3D-Printed Soft Robot Generating Inching and Crawling Locomotions [IROS '13]
Design of a 3D-printed soft robot with posture and steering control [ICRA '14]
Soft animals and robots face a fundamental problem of controlling movements with unlimited degrees of freedom. To examine this problem in more detail I have developed 3-D printed soft robots based on a highly tractable animal model, Manduca sexta. Most animal locomotion involves two important control mechanisms: rhythm generation and postural maintenance. According to this, I have examined how to actuate soft materials with rhythm generation and postural maintenance. Using only two actuators I have shown that rhythmic motor patterns can generate both inching and crawling locomotion, which is similar to the real caterpillar (movie: the left YouTube video). Furthermore, using three actuators I also have demonstrated that imbalanced contraction forces between antagonistically arranged actuators on the robot also allows the robot to steer (movie: the right YouTube video).
我々人間も含めすべての動物は，筋，腱，皮膚などの柔らかい機能性素材をうまく使うことで，自然界などの変化し続ける環境で適応的に運動を作り出します．実は，工場用の硬いロボットのためのロボット工学では，柔軟な素材の動きの制御を扱うことができません．柔軟な素材をいかに制御するか？このことをより詳細に調べるために，我々は生物のボディデザインの基本要素である円柱形に着目し，その形のまま地面や木を這い回る動物であるイモムシ（スズメ蛾や蚕蛾の幼虫）をベースにした3Dプリントソフトロボットを開発しています．