Flexible manipulator inspired by octopi: advantages of the pulling mechanism

In this study, we focus on flexible manipulators made of silicone. In conventional works, various flexible manipulators have been proposed. Usually, these manipulators are driven by air pressure. By expanding some parts of a finger, pushing force is generated to bend the finger. In contrast, most re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inArtificial life and robotics Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 167 - 172
Main Authors Ito, Kazuyuki, Mukai, Taichi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Tokyo Springer Japan 01.02.2020
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Artificial Intelligence
Computation by Abstract Devices
Computer Science
Control
Flexible manipulators
Mechatronics
Original Article
Pushing
Robotics
Flexible manipulator
Many degrees of freedom
Octopus
Grasping
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Summary:In this study, we focus on flexible manipulators made of silicone. In conventional works, various flexible manipulators have been proposed. Usually, these manipulators are driven by air pressure. By expanding some parts of a finger, pushing force is generated to bend the finger. In contrast, most real creatures use a pulling force to move their bodies. In our previous works, we developed a flexible manipulator using pulling mechanism that generate octopus-like behavior. However, advantages of the pulling mechanism were not demonstrated enough. In this paper, to confirm the advantages of the proposed pulling mechanism, we develop two manipulators of the same size: one uses the conventional pushing mechanism, and the other uses the proposed pulling mechanism. The goal of this study is to explore the advantages of the developed manipulator with the pulling mechanism by comparing it to the conventional manipulator with the pushing mechanism. Experiments are conducted to compare their adaptive behaviors.
ISSN:1433-5298
1614-7456
DOI:10.1007/s10015-019-00573-7