電界共役流体を用いたポンプ・タンク一体型液圧駆動ロボットフィンガ

摘要

Electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is a kind of functional fluid, which produces a jet flow (ECF jet) when subjected to high DC voltage. It is known that a strong ECF jet is generated under nonuniform electric field, for example, the field with a pair of needle and ring electrode. This study introduces the ECF jet to develop a novel robot finger. First, we propose a concept of the robot finger which mainly consists of an ECF jet generator, a bending actuator and an ECF tank. The robot finger is driven by ECF jet, and integrated with a pump and a tank. Next, we characterize the ECF jet generator and confirm the effect of the variation of electrode gap and number of electrode pair on its performance. Finally, we investigate the characteristics of the robot finger. The length, the diameter, and the mass of the robot finger are 25 mm, 5 mm, and 3.8 g, respectively. The robot finger can move 27.8 mm in x direction and 26.7 mm in y direction at 3.1 s when ECF jet generator is applied at 6.0 kV.%近年のロボット技術の進歩により，ロボットの活躍の場は従来の規格化された工場内から衝や家庭といった人の生活空間へと拡大しつつあり，人との接触を前程としたロボットハンドの開発が数多く行われている．これらのロボットハンドは，小型化，軽量化および柔軟化が安全性向上といった観点から重要な課題となる．しかし，従来研究において開発されてきたロボットハンドの多くは，小型化，軽量化および柔軟化という点に関しては十分であるといえない．