Abstract
Proposed new actuation mechanism realizes active or semi-active mobility for flexible long cables such as fiber scopes. The ciliary vibration mechanism was developed by the flexible ciliary tapes that can be attached to existing cables easily. The ciliary vibration mechanism has plastic or metal thin wires called cilia and achieve driving power through cilia vibration. As the cilia are angled and planted, by adding vibration to the cables, the body can move forward through a falling-down and standing-up motion. The behavior of testpieces that were used in experiments were simulated using model. In the model, numerous cilia are treated as one linear spring and one rotational spring as a whole. In addition, to confirm the characteristics shown in experiments, experimental results were compared using calculated results.
