In this paper, we develop a soft climbing robot made of silicone. Octopus-like behaviour is realized by a simple mechanism utilizing the dynamics of the soft body, and the robot can grasp various objects of unknown shape. In addition, by inching its truck, it can climb various columnar objects. Experiments using pipes, long balloons, and natural trees are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed robot.
Maintenance and inspection of old buildings, bridges, tunnels and so on are one of the important tasks of robots, and these robots are expected to be used for search and rescue missions in case of disasters. However, in such environment, it is difficult to operate robots autonomously because the surface of them are complex and unknown. In inspection tasks, many robots are expected to be simultaneously operated by a small number of operators, therefor lack of autonomy is a serious problem for practical use. To solve this problem, we focus on flexible mechanisms of bodies of creatures, and we propose two types of multi-legged robot. One is for climbing vertical walls and the other is for climbing vertical pipes. We developed prototype robots and conducted experiments. As a result, we confirmed that the developed robot can climb autonomously by utilizing the passive mechanisms.
Inspection and maintenance of large industrial plants are important tasks expected of robots. Furthermore, it is expected that an autonomous robot will be able to climb various arbitrary columnar objects, such as pipes, pillars, and trees. These tasks would be very difficult for conventional robots, because most must first assess the shape of the object and control many bodily degrees of freedom in order to climb. In our previous work, we developed a flexible manipulator, inspired by an octopus, which could grasp various objects without sensors or controls. Its flexible body passively adapted to differences in the objects’ features. In this research, we apply that mechanism to a six-legged climbing robot, which can climb arbitrary columnar objects without first sensing their shapes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.