Gallentine James, Wooten Michael B, Thielen Marc, Walker Ian D, Speck Thomas, Niklas Karl
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, United States.
Plant Biomechanics Group and Botanic Garden, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.
Front Robot AI. 2020 Aug 25;7:118. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2020.00118. eCollection 2020.
Applications in remote inspection and medicine have motivated the recent development of innovative thin, flexible-backboned robots. However, such robots often experience difficulties in maintaining their intended posture under gravitational and other external loadings. Thin-stemmed climbing plants face many of the same problems. One highly effective solution adopted by such plants features the use of tendrils and tendril-like structures, or the intertwining of several individual stems to form braid-like structures. In this paper, we present new plant-inspired robotic tendril-bearing and intertwining stem hardware and corresponding novel attachment strategies for thin continuum robots. These contributions to robotics are motivated by new insights into plant tendril and intertwining mechanics and behavior. The practical applications of the resulting GrowBots is discussed in the context of space exploration and mining operations.
远程检测和医学领域的应用推动了新型薄型、具有柔性主干的机器人的近期发展。然而，此类机器人在重力和其他外部载荷作用下往往难以保持预期姿态。细茎攀缘植物也面临许多相同问题。此类植物采用的一种非常有效的解决方案是利用卷须和类似卷须的结构，或者将几根单独的茎相互缠绕形成辫状结构。在本文中，我们展示了受植物启发的新型带卷须和相互缠绕茎的机器人硬件，以及针对细连续体机器人的相应新颖附着策略。对植物卷须和缠绕力学及行为的新见解激发了这些机器人技术方面的成果。所得的“生长机器人”的实际应用在太空探索和采矿作业的背景下进行了讨论。
