Locomotion of a Simple Foam Robot.
Kastor, Nikolas.
White, Robert D.
2017.
- Robots that can easily interact with humans and natural environments are becoming increasingly essential for applications such as disaster relief, search and rescue, structure inspection, surveillance, medical diagnostic and therapy, and human machine interaction. Important characteristics will include robustness, low impact forces, and the ability to negotiate unstructured environments. One strategy ... read moretowards accomplishing these goals is to build the robots using soft and flexible materials. This can make them much more approachable and less likely to damage their environment. In an effort to address this, foam robots have become an emerging technology in the field of soft robotics. We present a robotic platform made from open-cell polyurethane foam for studying manufacturing and control of soft foam robots. The robot illustrates that simple geometry and actuator arrangement, combined with highly-deformable non-linear material, can produce complex movements through unstructured environments. The soft nature of the foam allows the robot to adapt to uncertainties in the environment. Its non-linear material properties are useful in exploiting dramatic shape changes without significant energy draw.read less
- Kastor, Nikolas, Ritwika Mukherjee, Eliad Cohen, Vishesh Vikas, Barry Trimmer and Robert D. White. "Locomotion of a Simple Foam Robot." Paper presented at the 8th International Symposium on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines, AMAM 2017, Sapporo, Japan, June 27 - 30, 2017.
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