滑空ヘビ型ロボットの滑空運動に関するモデル構築と解析

抄録

Flying snakes can glide in the air by undulating their entire body. We have been developing a gliding snake-like robot based on this flying snake. Although there are still many unclear questions about the flying snake, the goal of our research is to clarify the gliding mechanism through the engineering approach of developing a gliding snake-like robot. In this paper, a theoretical model was used to examine the effects of aerial undulation on the robot. The robot was modeled as an articulated chain of links connected with rotational joints. The aerodynamic forces were modeled using blade element theory and force coefficients of flying snakes. We used the method of Kane et. al. to formulate the equation of motion. The equation was integrated by the solver named ode45 built into MATLAB. We reported the effects of undulation that acted on gliding characteristics.