ゲルと形状記憶合金アクチュエータを用いたソフト移動ロボットの研究

抄録

Animals with soft bodies, such as snail and caterpillars, often exhibit excellent adaptivity to various terrain. For the purpose to clarify their excellence , the authors take a synthetic approach by constructing flexible robots which resemble their motion. In this paper, we develop a soft-bodied mobile robot using gel in which multiple shape memory alloy actuators in V-shaped arrangement. By applying periodic voltage with certain phase difference, we show that a surface wave appears on the robots belly, which results in its forward locomotion.