Anchoring like octopus: biologically inspired soft artificial sucker
- Submitting institution
-
Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Sareh1
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1098/rsif.2017.0395
- Title of journal
- Journal of The Royal Society Interface
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 1
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 135
- ISSN
- 1742-5662
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2017.0395
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
7
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- People who need to work at height, underground or in hazardous locations have higher health risks due to falling, exposures to toxic chemicals or other aspects of their work. To avoid these problems, mobile robotic manipulation technologies have allowed humans to operate remotely without exposure to hazardous environments. An essential feature for such a mobile manipulation technology is reliable attachment to various surfaces in the environment. This paper presents a novel sensory-physical anchoring module, a sensorized mechanism for attachment to the environment that can be integrated into robots to enable or enhance various functions such as robot mobility, remaining on location or its ability to manipulate objects. The module uses a single sensory unit exploiting a fibre-optic sensing principle to seamlessly measure proximity and tactile information for use in robot motion planning as well as measuring the state of firmness of its anchor. The paper describes the concept of sensory-physical attachment and a set of experiments performed to validate the effectiveness of the module in quantifying the state of firmness of anchors and discriminating between different amounts of physical loads attached to it. The proposed anchoring module can enable many industrial applications where attachment to the environment is of crucial importance for robot control. Robots integrated with such anchoring modules can replace humans in a more effective way at hazardous locations to enhance occupational safety and reduce relevant health risks. The paper made the foundation for the lead author’s EPSRC-UKRI Innovation Fellowship (EP/S001840/1) namely “Getting a grip: from the science of robotic attachment to innovation and deployment” building on the concept of sensory-physical attachment proposed by this paper, creating multi-modal anchoring modules for mobile robots and translating the research into real-world applications in partnership with 3M plc, the world leader in adhesion technologies, Ultimaker and Behavioural Robotics companies.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
