Woodpeckers have flexible and extendable tongues that they use to reach their prey through tiny openings in trees and insect burrows. This unique capability of their tongue represents a promising design for a tool for picking up and handling objects in unstructured environments. Inspired by the characteristics of woodpeckers, we designed a robot manipulator that can substantially extend its length and bend its shape in 2D space. more.

Rigid linkages allow robots to lift heavy loads but prevent them from gently stretching and bending their bodies. Continuum robots without rigid linkages have a wide range of motion, safety, shape adaptability, and compliance. To combine the benefits of both continuum and rigid robots, we propose a method of switching between discrete and continuum states by a dislocatable joint. more.

Soft actuators, wihch are inspired by natural muscle, have many potential advantages such as resistance to mechanical damage and inherent compliance. However, their deployment have been restricted by the lack of their performance including limited stroke, difficulty of control, and slow response time. To overcome this problem, we have proposed a new class of soft actuator based on ultrasonic motors with ease of control and good reesponse time. This motor with an elastic coil spring slider can rotate and translate the slider. Also, the translation stroke (travelling distance) is designed to be almost the same as the length of the coil spring. more.

We proposed a new motion mechanism using the tubular structure of a shower hose to mimic the useful qualities of natural land leeches, namely, to be lightweight, flexible and extendable. The flexible tube is the same kind as found in household use. A gear engages with the helical groove on the surface of the tube. The flexible tube moves back and forth by rotational motion. The robot that has a body composed of three flexible tubes can bend or elongate by controlling the length of each flexible tube fed by the gear. more.

We propose an eye robot system with master–slave control using operator-gaze tracking data, which can produce a high response level such as that of the human eyes. The operators can move a remote robot camera by only moving their eye (master) in front of an eye tracking apparatus and obtain visual information of the environment surrounding the robot’s eye (slave). The use of ultrasonic motors has enabled the high responsiveness of the robot eye and the compactness of the robot body. Our graphical user interface (GUI) makes the operation intuitive. more.