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Development of an Amphibious Turtle-Inspired Spherical Mother Robot

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Abstract

Robots play an important role in underwater monitoring and recovery operations, such as pollution detection, submarine sampling and data collection, video mapping, and object recovery in dangerous places. However, regular-sized robots may not be suitable for applications in some restricted underwater environments. Accordingly, in previous research we designed several novel types of bio-inspired microrobots using Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) and Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuators. These microrobots possess some attributes of compact structure, multi-functionality, flexibility, and precise positioning. However, they lack the attributes of long endurance, stable high speed, and large load capacity necessary for real-world applications. To overcome these disadvantages, we proposed a mother-son robot system, composed of several microrobots as sons and a newly designed amphibious spherical robot as the mother. Inspired by amphibious turtles, the mother robot was designed with a spherical body and four legs with two Degrees of Freedom (DOF). It is actuated by four vectored water-jet propellers and ten servomotors, and it is capable of walking on land and cruising underwater. We analysed the mother robot’s walking and underwater cruising mechanisms, constructed a prototype, and carried out a series of experiments to evaluate its amphibious motions. Good motion performance was observed in the experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, P. R. China

    Liwei Shi & Shuxiang Guo

  2. Faculty of Engineering, Kagawa University, 2217-20 Hayashi-cho, Takamatsu, Kagawa, 761-0396, Japan

    Liwei Shi & Shuxiang Guo

  3. Graduate School of Engineering, Kagawa University, 2217-20 Hayashi-cho, Takamatsu, Kagawa, 761-0396, Japan

    Shilian Mao, Chunfeng Yue & Maoxun Li

  4. Kansai Research Institute, AIST, 1-8-31 Midorigaoka, Ikeda, Osaka, 563-8577, Japan

    Kinji Asaka

Authors
  1. Liwei Shi
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  2. Shuxiang Guo
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  3. Shilian Mao
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  4. Chunfeng Yue
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  5. Maoxun Li
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  6. Kinji Asaka
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Correspondence to Liwei Shi.

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Shi, L., Guo, S., Mao, S. et al. Development of an Amphibious Turtle-Inspired Spherical Mother Robot. J Bionic Eng 10, 446–455 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1672-6529(13)60248-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1672-6529(13)60248-6

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