柔軟全周囲クローラの湾曲姿勢計測について: 新しい柔軟変位センサを用いた脊椎構造物の湾曲姿勢計測

摘要

We have proposed Flexible Mono-tread mobile Track (FMT) as a mobile mechanism on rough terrain for rescue activity, environmental investigation and planetary explorer, etc. Generally speak­ing, one has to teleoperate robots under invisible condition. In order to operate the robots skillfully, it is necessary to detect not only condition around the robots and its position but also posture of the robots at any time. Since flexed posture of FMT decides turning radius and direction, it is important to know its posture. FMT has vertebral structure composed of vertebrae as rigid body and inter-vertebral disks made by flexible devices such as rubber cylinder and spring. Since the intervertebral disks flex in three dimension, traditional sensors such as potentiometers, rotary encoders and range finders can hardly use for measurement of its deformation. The purpose of the paper, therefore, is to measure flexed posture of FMT using a novel flexible displacement sensor. We prove that the flexed posture of FMT with five intervertebral disks can be detected through experiment.%近年，レスキュー活動の支援や環境調査，惑星探査など，さまざまな不整地環境におけるロボット技術の応用が期待されている．このような不整地環境における探査では接地圧力を分散できるクローラによる移動機構が有利であることが多い．また，がれきに生じた狭隆空間を移動したり，障害物を乗り越えるために，いくつかのクローラを直列した機構やクローラアームを持つ機構が提されている．