Abstract
Animals can move in not only elegant but also energy efficient ways. Their skin is one of the key components for this achievement. It provides a proper friction for forward motion and can protect them from slipping on a surface during locomotion. Inspired by this, we applied real shark skin to the foot soles of our hexapod robot AMOS. The material is formed to cover each foot of AMOS. Due to shark skin texture which has asymmetric profile inducing frictional anisotropy, this feature allows AMOS to grip specific surfaces and effectively locomote without slipping. Using real-time walking experiments, this study shows that implementing the biological material on the robot can reduce energy consumption while walking up a steep slope covered by carpets or other felt-like or rough substrates.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Dickinson, M., Farley, C., Full, R., Koehl, M., Kram, R., Lehman, S.: How animals move: An integrative view. Science 288(5463), 100–106 (2000)
Hawkes, E.W., Eason, E.V., Asbeck, A.T., Cutkosky, M.R.: The Gecko’s Toe: Scaling Directional Adhesives for Climbing Applications. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics 18(2), 518–526 (2013)
Lewinger, W.A., Quinn, R.D.: Neurobiologically-based Control System for an Adaptively Walking Hexapod. Ind. Robot 38(3), 258–263 (2011)
Manoonpong, P., Parlitz, U., Wörgötter, F.: Neural Control and Adaptive Neural Forward Models for Insect-like, Energy-Efficient, and Adaptable Locomotion of Walking Machines. Front. Neural Circuits 7, 12 (2013), doi:10.3389/fncir.2013.00012
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Manoonpong, P., Goldschmidt, D., Wörgötter, F., Kovalev, A., Heepe, L., Gorb, S. (2013). Using a Biological Material to Improve Locomotion of Hexapod Robots. In: Lepora, N.F., Mura, A., Krapp, H.G., Verschure, P.F.M.J., Prescott, T.J. (eds) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8064. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39802-5_48
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39802-5_48
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39801-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39802-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)