Whole Skin Locomotion Inspired by Amoeboid Motility Mechanisms

Abstract

In this paper, a locomotion mechanism for mobile robots inspired by how single celled organisms use cytoplasmic streaming to generate pseudopods for locomotion is presented. Called the whole skin locomotion, 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, even squeezing itself through holes of a diameter smaller than its nominal width. Therefore this motion is well suited for search and rescue robots that need to traverse over or under rubble, or for applications where a robot needs to enter into and maneuver around tight spaces such as for robotic endoscopes. This paper summarizes the many existing theories of amoeboid motility mechanisms and examines how these can be applied on a macroscale as a mobile robot locomotion concept, illustrating how biological principles can be used for developing novel robotic mechanisms. Five specific mechanisms are introduced, which could be implemented to such a robotic system. Descriptions of an early prototype and the preliminary experimental and finite element analysis results demonstrating the feasibility of the whole skin locomotion strategy are also presented, followed by a discussion of future work.

A soft robot that navigates its environment through growth

“…Although roboticists have successfully recreated movement through the environment using locomotion, defined as the translation of the body from one location to another (8)-flying (9), running (10), swimming (11,12), cytoplasmic streaming (13), slithering (14), and leaping (15)-navigating the environment through growth is challenging in artificial systems. The work on soft continuum manipulators (16)(17)(18)(19)(20) and tendril-like robots (21,22) has laid a foundation that has been built upon by the recent development of root-inspired robots and endoscopes that either enter a new part of the environment without changing length (23,24) or extend one to five body lengths by adding material at rates of 1 to 10 mm/min to move through granular media (25,26).…”

Guest Editorial An Overview of Biomedical Robotics and Bio-Mechatronics Systems and Applications

“…In [2], the so called whole skin locomotion inspired by the movement of single celled organisms was developed. It works with an elongated toroid to generate the overall motion of the cytoplasmic streaming, and thus turns itself inside out in a single continuous motion.…”

Actuation mechanisms for biologically inspired everting toroidal robots

“…The first mechanism uses a statically stable tapespring mechanism which is fully compliant yet can maintain its shape without an internal structure [4]. The second mechanism uses a snake like robot that is wrapped around a cylindrical structure into the shape of a torus.…”