蛇型ロボットの泳動実験と数値解析モデルの構築の基礎検討

抄録

Although a snake-like robot can move in fluid as well as on the ground, it has to drive many actuators, so it is necessary to reduce the power consumption and improve the moving efficiency. Also, for a pipe survey, a snake-like robot must move in the environment such as not only water but also mud and clay by undulating motion. The survey of optimal behaviors in water and mud by using the numerical model is effective to resolve these problems because many combinations of the surrounding environment and parameters of input torque can be tried on the computer. For this purpose, we aimed to construct the numerical model of a snake-like robot that swims in water and oil with different kinematic viscosities. First, we performed experiments of the snake-like robot with 8 links swimming in three kinds of fluids, water and two kinds of oil with different kinematic viscosities, and measured the joint positions of the snake-like robot during the swimming motion. Next, two numerical models of the snake-like robot swimming in water and oil were constructed, whose unknown coefficients were identified by using the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) with the measured joint positions. As a result, we succeeded in constructing models in which the calculated position of the center of gravity (COG) of the snake-like robot agreed with the experimental values when the same input torque was applied to the numerical model as in the experiment.