Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 08, 2019 - September 11, 2019
In our laboratory, we have developed a flexible robot arm that imitates the muscle structure of the octopus arm using McKibben artificial muscles. The McKibben artificial muscle is a pneumatic soft actuator consisting of a rubber tube and a fiber sleeve. Because the robot arm is configured with the artificial muscles and soft materials, the robot arm has advantages in flexibility and lightness, and can be expected to be applied in an environment close to people and fragile products such as nursing care and agriculture fields. On the other hand, its low rigidity leads to limitations in the tasks that can be performed. In this report, a flexible robot arm with variable stiffness function is manufactured by using the jamming transition method that can change the rigidity of the mechanism. In addition, the appropriate structure of the jamming mechanism and arm configuration are investigated experimentally, and the improvement of the object gripping ability of the flexible robot arm is confirmed.
