二次元アメーバ状ロボットの構築

—弾性ネットワークロボットにおける移動運動の実現—

抄録

Morpho-Functional Machine is a new developmental approach for the robotics research area. Morpho-Functional Machine is a coined word and means the robotic system that has the properties like an organism. An organism, consists of the multi-cellular system, is capable of deforming own morphology and emerging the function. As a result, it makes possible to adapt to the external environment. Realization of such the flexibility and the adaptability is the main objective in the robotic system. So far, as a method to realize the robotic system, the distributed autonomous robotic system that derives from the biological multi-cellular system have been proposed. Particularly, it was proposed to imitate those of a most primitive organism, slime mold, dyctiostelium. Then, for an amoeba-like robot system, an artificial amoeba model was constructed based on several researches for the slime mold in mathematical biology. Based on the model, it has been developed an actual robot, called SMA-Net. In hardware design for the robot, the shape memory alloy is made use of as the skeleton for the body as well as the actuator. The flexible structure enables the deformation of own body was realized.