Prototype of tongue muscle mimicking soft robot

Abstract

The animal tongue can perform various roles such as feeding, swallowing, and speaking by taking advantage of its flexible and free-moving features. The complicated and dexterous movements of the tongue are acquired by three-dimensionally oriented muscles, and mimicking the muscle orientation can be expected to realize a general-purpose manipulator. Previously, the authors developed the tongue muscle robot which mimicked the human tongue muscle structure by pneumatic artificial muscles. In this paper, as a prototype for the realization of a general-purpose tongue-mimetic manipulator, the performance of the developed tongue robot was reported.