キリン首型筋骨格ロボットの項靭帯と弾性関節の改良

抄録

Necks of giraffes have excellent characteristics as a robot mechanism. In order to gather knowledge to realize power-soft robots that have both powerfulness and flexibility, we focus on necks of giraffes from the point of view of robotics We develop a half sized musculoskeletal robot with vertebrae, disks, a nuchal ligament and thin McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles based on anatomy of giraffe and actual skeletal shape. The nuchal ligament is one of the most remarkable features of a neck of giraffe and expected to play an important role in its gravity compensation mechanism. To apply these mechanisms to robot mechanism, we mimic disks and a nuchal ligament with rubber in the developed musculoskeletal robot and confirmed that the musculoskeletal robot was able to stand with disks of elastic joints and the nuchal ligament, not supported by artificial muscles.