水中ゴミを回収するクラゲ型ロボットの検討

抄録

Environmental contamination such as marine pollution has been regarded as an important problem recently. In this research, we focus on the flow of water generated by a predation of jellyfish and have developed a jellyfish soft robot that collects rubbish floating in the sea. A shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator was used for the jellyfish soft robot as the driving source. The SMA actuator was manufactured with SMA wire of 0.15 mm in diameter and silicone rubber. The SMA actuator was also attached to the cap of jellyfish soft robot. We tried two types of underwater experiment that first one is flow visualization using fluorescent yellow paint and the other one collects cellulose powder with a filter. Experimental results showed that the water was flowed under the cap of jellyfish soft robot when its cap was closed. Several vortex rings were generated only at the tip of the cap. The cellulose powder was extruded and then flowed to avoid the filter. In this paper, we report the rubbish collection method, the design and experiment of the jellyfish robot.