變動彎曲角度對機械蛇運動效率的探討

Abstract

仿生學研究動物的自然特性，將其優勢應用到工程領域當中。由仿生學的觀點，蛇類的特殊外貌及運動方式是相當值得探討的。現今的蛇型機械人大多採用蜿蜒爬行的運動方式做移動。日本學者Hirose提出了一個公式去描述蜿蜒爬行的運動方式。依據這個公式，蛇類做蜿蜒爬行時，整個軀幹使用一個固定振幅的彎曲角度。然而，根據實驗的觀察，蛇並非固定範圍地擺動身體。中間軀幹的擺動幅度比起頭尾部分都還要大。這個自然行為所帶來的優勢是應當被探討的。 在本論文內，我們設計了數種機械蛇的運動模式，這些模式是根據觀察而啟發的，其彎曲角度的振幅在整個軀幹上是變動的。機械蛇在不同的運動模式下，會有不一樣的運動效率，本論文主要探討在變動彎曲角度的模式下，對機械蛇運動效率的影響。

The studies on snake robot mostly adopt serpentine movement as the way of locomotion. Hirose proposed a famous equation to describe the serpentine motion which has been widely used by the researchers. According to the equation, snakes use constant amplitude of bending angles through the whole body. However, the amplitudes are not equivalent in the practical observation and analysis. Amplitudes are various in the different parts of snake. The phenomenon can be applied to improve the equations. The improvement to snake robot locomotion is decided by the efficiency analysis. Some special moving modes of snake robot are proposed to discuss the locomotion efficiency. These modes are the application from the observation. Efficiency discussion includes simulation and experiment, both results show the better efficiency with the improvements.