arXiv:2409.16976cs.RO2024-09被引 3

水下软体藤蔓机器人通过充液袋实现转向,可弯曲达68度。

Hydraulic Volumetric Soft Everting Vine Robot Steering Mechanism for Underwater Exploration

  • 用充液袋设计实现水下转向,利用环境水作为驱动介质。
  • 在2000毫升充气量下最大弯曲角度达68度,与陆地机器人相当。
  • 结构简单,无需外部供液,适合复杂水下环境探索。

尽管地球表面大部分被水覆盖,但水下探索仍受限于技术挑战。现有遥控潜水器(ROVs)和自主水下航行器(AUVs)体积大、刚性高,难以适应环境。软体机器人提供了新可能,其中流体驱动的外翻式(eversion)机器人尤为适用。这类机器人在水下环境中具有天然优势。关键挑战在于实现有效转向。本文提出一种基于弯曲袋的水下外翻机器人设计,其原理与陆地机器人一致:通过充液袋收缩实现方向改变。该机器人使用作业环境中的水作为驱动介质,同时帮助维持中性浮力。由于弯曲袋的驱动机制,机器人需完全伸展后才能转向。三台相同尺寸的机器人由聚乙烯管制成并进行测试。结果表明,虽然不同充气量下的弯曲程度不一致,但在多种充气量下仍实现有效弯曲,最大弯曲角达68度(2000毫升时),符合文献中陆地机器人的报道水平。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Despite a significant proportion of the Earth being covered in water, exploration of what lies below has been limited due to the challenges and difficulties inherent in the process. Current state of the art robots such as Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are bulky, rigid and unable to conform to their environment. Soft robotics offers solutions to this issue. Fluid-actuated eversion or growing robots, in particular, are a good example. While current eversion robots have found many applications on land, their inherent properties make them particularly well suited to underwater environments. An important factor when considering underwater eversion robots is the establishment of a suitable steering mechanism that can enable the robot to change direction as required. This project proposes a design for an eversion robot that is capable of steering while underwater, through the use of bending pouches, a design commonly seen in the literature on land-based eversion robots. These bending pouches contract to enable directional change. Similar to their land-based counterparts, the underwater eversion robot uses the same fluid in the medium it operates in to achieve extension and bending but also to additionally aid in neutral buoyancy. The actuation method of bending pouches meant that robots needed to fully extend before steering was possible. Three robots, with the same design and dimensions were constructed from polyethylene tubes and tested. Our research shows that although the soft eversion robot design in this paper was not capable of consistently generating the same amounts of bending for the inflation volume, it still achieved suitable bending at a range of inflation volumes and was observed to bend to a maximum angle of 68 degrees at 2000 ml, which is in line with the bending angles reported for land-based eversion robots in the literature.

软体机器人水下探索流体驱动转向机制

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。