Abstract
Due to irregular terrain and micro-gravity in an asteroid, particular locomotion mechanism is required for exploring an asteroid by a robot. As one of the asteroid robots, a ground grip locomotion robot is proposed. One of the most important things for realizing the robot is development of the finger mechanism which can certainly grip an uneven surface. In order to do this, it is needed to understand frictional characteristics between the finger and the surface, and to formulate grip condition. Therefore, we conducted the experimental evaluation of gripping characteristics by measuring the coefficient of friction between several finger shapes and simulated ground. Moreover, the possibility of gripping was analyzed by conditional equation. In this paper, the experimental results confirmed that conic shape is effective for ground grip locomotion robot.
