Dennis W. Hong

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech

Title:

A biologically inspired whole skin locomotion strategy for mobile robots

Abstract:

A novel locomotion mechanism for mobile robots inspired by the motility mechanisms of amoebae is presented. These single celled organisms use cytoplasmic streaming to generate pseudopods for locomotion, and the Whole Skin Locomotion, as we call it, works by way of an elongated toroid which turns itself inside out in a single continuous motion, effectively generating the overall motion of the cytoplasmic streaming ectoplasmic tube in amoebae.

With an elastic membrane or a mesh of links acting as its outer skin, the robot can easily squeeze between obstacles or under a collapsed ceiling and move forward using all of its contact surfaces for traction, or even squeeze itself through holes with diameters smaller than its nominal width making this the ideal locomotion method for search and rescue robots that need to traverse over or under rubble, or for applications where a robot needs to move in and maneuver itself into tight spaces such as for robotic endoscopes.

We summarize the many existing theories of amoeboid motility mechanisms, and examine how these can be applied on a macro scale as a novel mobile robot locomotion concept. Four locomotion mechanism models are presented with preliminary experiments and their results, demonstrating the feasibility of the whole skin locomotion strategy.