自励発振を用いた衛星探査用索状推進体の適応制御に関する検討

抄録

Although a snake-like robot can move in fluid as well as on the ground, it has to drive many actuators. Then it is necessary to reduce the power consumption and improve the moving efficiency. Also, for a planetary exploration, a snake-like robot must move in the environment such as not only water but also mud and clay by undulating locomotion. Therefore, the snake-like robot needs to adapt to changes in the environment and change undulating locomotion to maintain its moving efficiency. For this purpose, we focused on organisms that changes undulating locomotion in response to change in kinematic viscosity. In particular Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans), a type of nematode, can change undulating locomotion significantly compared to other organisms. Then we aimed to construct the numerical model of a snake-like robot that imitated the behavior translation of C.elegans. First, the numerical model of the snake-like robot whose swimming frequency changes according to the kinematic viscosity was constructed. Second, 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. As a result, we obtained experimental results showing the same tendency as C.elegans.