Abstract
An octopus arm with a flexible structure and no rigid skeleton shows a high degree of freedom and flexibility. These excellent features are suitable for working in an environment having fragile and unknown-shaped objects. Therefore, a soft robot arm resembling an octopus arm can be useful as a harvesting machine without damaging crops in the agricultural field, as a rehabilitation apparatus in the welfare field, as a safe surgery tool in the medical field, and so on. Unlike industrial robots, to consider the applications of the soft robot arm, the instructions for it relating to a task cannot in many cases be given as a numerical value, and the motion according to an operator's sense and intent is useful. This paper describes the design and feedback control of a soft master-slave robot system. The system is configured with two soft rubber machines; one is a slave machine that is the soft robot arm mimicking the muscle arrangement of the octopus arm by pneumatic artificial muscles, and the other is a master machine that gives the target motion to the slave machine. Both are configured with soft materials. The slave machine has an actuating part and a sensing part, it can perform bending and torsional motions, and these motions are estimated by the sensing part with threads that connect to wire encoders. The master machine is almost the same configuration, but it has no actuating part. The slave machine is driven according to the deformation of the master machine. We confirmed experimentally that the slave machine followed the master machine that was deformed by an operator.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 40 |
| Journal | Actuators |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 1 2019 |
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Keywords
- Artificial muscle
- Master-slave arm
- Octopus arm
- Soft robot arm
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Control and Systems Engineering
- Control and Optimization
Cite this
A soft master-slave robot mimicking octopus arm structure using thin artificial muscles and wire encoders. / Furukawa, Shota; Wakimoto, Shuichi; Kanda, Takefumi; Hagihara, Hiroki.
In: Actuators, Vol. 8, No. 2, 40, 01.06.2019.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - A soft master-slave robot mimicking octopus arm structure using thin artificial muscles and wire encoders
AU - Furukawa, Shota
AU - Wakimoto, Shuichi
AU - Kanda, Takefumi
AU - Hagihara, Hiroki
PY - 2019/6/1
Y1 - 2019/6/1
N2 - An octopus arm with a flexible structure and no rigid skeleton shows a high degree of freedom and flexibility. These excellent features are suitable for working in an environment having fragile and unknown-shaped objects. Therefore, a soft robot arm resembling an octopus arm can be useful as a harvesting machine without damaging crops in the agricultural field, as a rehabilitation apparatus in the welfare field, as a safe surgery tool in the medical field, and so on. Unlike industrial robots, to consider the applications of the soft robot arm, the instructions for it relating to a task cannot in many cases be given as a numerical value, and the motion according to an operator's sense and intent is useful. This paper describes the design and feedback control of a soft master-slave robot system. The system is configured with two soft rubber machines; one is a slave machine that is the soft robot arm mimicking the muscle arrangement of the octopus arm by pneumatic artificial muscles, and the other is a master machine that gives the target motion to the slave machine. Both are configured with soft materials. The slave machine has an actuating part and a sensing part, it can perform bending and torsional motions, and these motions are estimated by the sensing part with threads that connect to wire encoders. The master machine is almost the same configuration, but it has no actuating part. The slave machine is driven according to the deformation of the master machine. We confirmed experimentally that the slave machine followed the master machine that was deformed by an operator.
AB - An octopus arm with a flexible structure and no rigid skeleton shows a high degree of freedom and flexibility. These excellent features are suitable for working in an environment having fragile and unknown-shaped objects. Therefore, a soft robot arm resembling an octopus arm can be useful as a harvesting machine without damaging crops in the agricultural field, as a rehabilitation apparatus in the welfare field, as a safe surgery tool in the medical field, and so on. Unlike industrial robots, to consider the applications of the soft robot arm, the instructions for it relating to a task cannot in many cases be given as a numerical value, and the motion according to an operator's sense and intent is useful. This paper describes the design and feedback control of a soft master-slave robot system. The system is configured with two soft rubber machines; one is a slave machine that is the soft robot arm mimicking the muscle arrangement of the octopus arm by pneumatic artificial muscles, and the other is a master machine that gives the target motion to the slave machine. Both are configured with soft materials. The slave machine has an actuating part and a sensing part, it can perform bending and torsional motions, and these motions are estimated by the sensing part with threads that connect to wire encoders. The master machine is almost the same configuration, but it has no actuating part. The slave machine is driven according to the deformation of the master machine. We confirmed experimentally that the slave machine followed the master machine that was deformed by an operator.
KW - Artificial muscle
KW - Master-slave arm
KW - Octopus arm
KW - Soft robot arm
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85067025956&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85067025956&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/act8020040
DO - 10.3390/act8020040
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067025956
VL - 8
JO - Actuators
JF - Actuators
SN - 2076-0825
IS - 2
M1 - 40
ER -