Advanced Stem Mechanism for Flower Robot

摘要

As a service robot, we proposed a flower robot whichrnhas several functions, such as motion mechanism, sensingrnability, and home appliance functions. Among the variousrnfunctions of flower robot, the motion mechanism is veryrnimportant function because flower robot should describerntheir emotion by making gesture. Flower robot can berndivided as a flower, a stem and leaves. In previous research,rnwe already proposed stem mechanism actuated by tendonsrnand motors. But this previous stem mechanism has twornkinds of drawbacks. Firstly, the previous stem structure hasrna limited bending angle only about 10 degrees and thus itrnhas the restricted view-angel. Secondly, the stem structurernhas only two degree of freedom bending motion and itrncannot describe various motions. Therefore, we need morernadvanced stem mechanism which has more degree ofrnfreedom in order for the flower robot to express variousrnmotions of the flower robot. The new stem mechanism hasrntotally five degree of freedom. Two degrees of freedom arernin charge of bending motion of the stem and the remainingrnthree degrees of freedom are in charge of steering motion.rnThe advanced stem mechanism makes it possible to havernvarious motion of the stem. Through the experiments, thernperformances of the advanced stem structure are verifiedrnand the characteristics are analyzed.