連続的な腹部機構を有するヘビ型ロボットの開発

抄録

We have been developing robots closer to living snakes in order to understand snakes's locomotion mechanisms with the constructive method. However, because the passive wheels are used for the abdominal mechanism, the continuity and edge shape of the snake's abdomen are not reproduced. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to develop a snake-like robot equipped with such an abdominal function of a snake on the premise that it is driven not only on a plane but also in a three-dimensional environment. The experiments show the fabricated mechanism mimics the continuity and edge shape of a snake abdomen. This mechanism withstands three-dimensional bending and can interpolate the discrete robot segments with a curved line. The robot can push concave portions and convex portions of the environment by this mechanism.