Michihisa Ishikura, Kazuhito Wakana, Eijiro Takeuchi, Masashi Konyo, and Satoshi Tadokoro

Abstract:
This paper reports upon the design and evaluation of an inchworm drive based on frictional anisotropy for an Active Scope Camera (ASC), which is a snake-like rescue robot used in disaster-affected areas. The conventional ASC is mounted on a ciliary vibration drive and can search under rubble. It has been found, however, that there are some situations in which the vibration drive performs weakly, such as on soft or rough road surfaces. In this paper, the authors propose an inchworm drive with an ASC. The inchworm drive developed in this research shows a running performance that resolves some of the weak points of the vibration drive. The authors focus in particular on the evaluation of driving experiments that were conducted on a variety of surfaces that might be encountered while searching inside a collapsed building or under rubble.

Keywords: snake-like rescue robots, inchworm drive, anisotropic friction by cilia, comparison with ciliary vibration drive