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Octopus-inspired robotics
This content has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text. 2015 Bioinspir. Biomim. 10 030301 (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-3190/10/3/030301) View the table of contents for this issue, or go to the journal homepage for more
Download details: IP Address: 189.218.243.160 This content was downloaded on 25/06/2016 at 22:15
Please note that terms and conditions apply.
Bioinspir. Biomim. 10 (2015) 030301
doi:10.1088/1748-3190/10/3/030301
PREFACE
Octopus-inspired robotics ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
17 February 2015 PUBLISHED
13 May 2015
Barbara Mazzolai1 and Cecilia Laschi2 Guest Editors 1 Center for Micro-BioRobotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, I-56025, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy 2 The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, I-56025, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]
The octopus as an ideal model for soft robotics The octopus is a mollusc belonging to the class Cephalopoda. This animal is characterized by sophisticated motor, sensory, and cognitive capabilities, and the ability to learn rapidly, features that make it a fascinating model of study in different disciplines. The octopus body has no rigid structures. Thanks to this, the octopus can adapt the shape of its body to the environment and its whole body can be squeezed into very small spaces, limited only by the size of its rigid brain capsule. It has eight arms which can twist, change their length, be bent in all directions at any point along the arm and, despite the lack of rigid skeletal support, can vary their stiffness to achieve relatively high values and to apply relatively high forces. The control of this large number of degrees of freedom is highly distributed and is simplified by the use of stereotyped movements. The eight arms are effectively used to locomote on the diverse substrates of the sea bottom and to reach, grasp and even manipulate objects with unexpected dexterity. This is possible mainly thanks to the presence of one or two rows of suckers on each arm (depending on the species), which allow the octopus to perform a remarkable variety of functions. Suckers, in fact, generate large attachment forces on non-porous surfaces and maintain these forces for rather long periods of time without any muscular energy consumption. Looking at an octopus with a roboticist’s eyes, it is remarkable not only in its softness and body-deformable properties, but also in the capability to stiffen its arms when needed to grasp and pull objects, or interact with the environment with considerable strength.
Translating the secrets of the octopus soft dexterity into robotics This challenge and the above-mentioned octopus features were the foundations and the core question © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd
that the OCTOPUS project endeavoured to answer. This challenge was not driven by scientific curiosity only, but also by the dream of deriving technological solutions for soft robotics. The project took a biomimetic approach to study the animal model, by identifying the key scientific questions for biologists, from the engineers/roboticists’ viewpoint, and by developing the engineering tools for measuring and modelling. The project then explored the technologies for stealing the main secret of the octopus arm, i.e. the muscular hydrostat, and developing soft robot bodyware, soft actuators, a sensitive skin, and suckers. Modelling and controlling such a soft robot came out as a new set of fundamental problems, providing the opportunity for exploring and developing novel techniques. The OCTOPUS robot is a soft-bodied eight-arm robot, that can crawl in water and take objects with a stiff grasp. It is especially an exhibition of the feasibility of soft robots and related technologies, but it is already making its way towards helpful applications: a soft endoscope for biomedical applications, a ‘grown-up’ octopus robot helping humans in underwater explorations and operations, and much more.
Highlights from octopus-related studies This special issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics intends to highlight some achievements obtained in investigating the octopus as animal model and its translation in artificial solutions. It gathers eight peerreviewed articles that give a thorough view of the research done on octopus-inspired robotics, in the many aspects such a challenge brought up. The paper by Hanassy et al presents an analysis and a modelling of the reaching movement of the animal arm, showing the elongation of the proximal part, and presents the elongation profiles as assessed by using three-dimensional reconstructions. Still on modelling, Godage et al present a novel spatial kinematic model based on mode shape functions, this time for modelling multisection continuum arms, in robotics.
Bioinspir. Biomim. 10 (2015) 030301
B Mazzolai and C Laschi
Robot arms deriving from models of the octopus arm and its reaching and crawling movements have been developed in the works by Cianchetti et al which also includes their integration in an eight-arm robot. The specific study of the octopus suckers anatomy and morphology and of their adhesion principle has led to artificial suckers, described in the paper by Tramacere et al. The study of the octopus sculling swimming and related fluidodynamics is presented in the paper by Sfakiotakis et al describing an octopus-inspired robot with such swimming ability. Control of these novel soft robot structures poses new challenges, that have been addressed in the works by Giorelli et al using a neural-network-based learning approach to the control of a soft arm and comparing it to a Jacobian-based controller, and by Nakajima et al who demonstrated the computing done by the soft body itself, in relation to its mechanical properties and interaction with water. The paper by Ranzani et al interestingly presents a possible application of the octopus-inspired soft robotics technologies in the biomedical field, i.e. for building an endoscope with controllable stiffness.
2
From the octopus to an international soft robotics community Octopus-inspired robotics has grown up especially with the OCTOPUS project, which demonstrated the use of soft materials for building robots and the successful application of biological working principles in robotics. This field has however enlarged its scope to a wider soft robotics community, which aims at investigating the next-generation robots, where soft parts allow to embody intelligence and obtain effective behaviour in natural environments. The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has recently started a Technical Committee on Soft Robotics, which gathers scientists in this field and provides opportunity for discussion within the robotics community. At European level, the FET Open programme of the European Commission is funding the RoboSoft Coordination Action, aiming at consolidating the soft robotics community, providing events, initiatives, and concrete actions for discussing and coordinating the scientific challenges, for stimulating the take-up of results towards innovation, and for educating young researchers in soft robotics science and technology.
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My IOPscience
Octopus-inspired robotics
This content has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text. 2015 Bioinspir. Biomim. 10 030301 (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-3190/10/3/030301) View the table of contents for this issue, or go to the journal homepage for more
Download details: IP Address: 189.218.243.160 This content was downloaded on 25/06/2016 at 22:15
Please note that terms and conditions apply.
Bioinspir. Biomim. 10 (2015) 030301
doi:10.1088/1748-3190/10/3/030301
PREFACE
Octopus-inspired robotics ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
17 February 2015 PUBLISHED
13 May 2015
Barbara Mazzolai1 and Cecilia Laschi2 Guest Editors 1 Center for Micro-BioRobotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, I-56025, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy 2 The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, I-56025, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]
The octopus as an ideal model for soft robotics The octopus is a mollusc belonging to the class Cephalopoda. This animal is characterized by sophisticated motor, sensory, and cognitive capabilities, and the ability to learn rapidly, features that make it a fascinating model of study in different disciplines. The octopus body has no rigid structures. Thanks to this, the octopus can adapt the shape of its body to the environment and its whole body can be squeezed into very small spaces, limited only by the size of its rigid brain capsule. It has eight arms which can twist, change their length, be bent in all directions at any point along the arm and, despite the lack of rigid skeletal support, can vary their stiffness to achieve relatively high values and to apply relatively high forces. The control of this large number of degrees of freedom is highly distributed and is simplified by the use of stereotyped movements. The eight arms are effectively used to locomote on the diverse substrates of the sea bottom and to reach, grasp and even manipulate objects with unexpected dexterity. This is possible mainly thanks to the presence of one or two rows of suckers on each arm (depending on the species), which allow the octopus to perform a remarkable variety of functions. Suckers, in fact, generate large attachment forces on non-porous surfaces and maintain these forces for rather long periods of time without any muscular energy consumption. Looking at an octopus with a roboticist’s eyes, it is remarkable not only in its softness and body-deformable properties, but also in the capability to stiffen its arms when needed to grasp and pull objects, or interact with the environment with considerable strength.
Translating the secrets of the octopus soft dexterity into robotics This challenge and the above-mentioned octopus features were the foundations and the core question © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd
that the OCTOPUS project endeavoured to answer. This challenge was not driven by scientific curiosity only, but also by the dream of deriving technological solutions for soft robotics. The project took a biomimetic approach to study the animal model, by identifying the key scientific questions for biologists, from the engineers/roboticists’ viewpoint, and by developing the engineering tools for measuring and modelling. The project then explored the technologies for stealing the main secret of the octopus arm, i.e. the muscular hydrostat, and developing soft robot bodyware, soft actuators, a sensitive skin, and suckers. Modelling and controlling such a soft robot came out as a new set of fundamental problems, providing the opportunity for exploring and developing novel techniques. The OCTOPUS robot is a soft-bodied eight-arm robot, that can crawl in water and take objects with a stiff grasp. It is especially an exhibition of the feasibility of soft robots and related technologies, but it is already making its way towards helpful applications: a soft endoscope for biomedical applications, a ‘grown-up’ octopus robot helping humans in underwater explorations and operations, and much more.
Highlights from octopus-related studies This special issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics intends to highlight some achievements obtained in investigating the octopus as animal model and its translation in artificial solutions. It gathers eight peerreviewed articles that give a thorough view of the research done on octopus-inspired robotics, in the many aspects such a challenge brought up. The paper by Hanassy et al presents an analysis and a modelling of the reaching movement of the animal arm, showing the elongation of the proximal part, and presents the elongation profiles as assessed by using three-dimensional reconstructions. Still on modelling, Godage et al present a novel spatial kinematic model based on mode shape functions, this time for modelling multisection continuum arms, in robotics.
Bioinspir. Biomim. 10 (2015) 030301
B Mazzolai and C Laschi
Robot arms deriving from models of the octopus arm and its reaching and crawling movements have been developed in the works by Cianchetti et al which also includes their integration in an eight-arm robot. The specific study of the octopus suckers anatomy and morphology and of their adhesion principle has led to artificial suckers, described in the paper by Tramacere et al. The study of the octopus sculling swimming and related fluidodynamics is presented in the paper by Sfakiotakis et al describing an octopus-inspired robot with such swimming ability. Control of these novel soft robot structures poses new challenges, that have been addressed in the works by Giorelli et al using a neural-network-based learning approach to the control of a soft arm and comparing it to a Jacobian-based controller, and by Nakajima et al who demonstrated the computing done by the soft body itself, in relation to its mechanical properties and interaction with water. The paper by Ranzani et al interestingly presents a possible application of the octopus-inspired soft robotics technologies in the biomedical field, i.e. for building an endoscope with controllable stiffness.
2
From the octopus to an international soft robotics community Octopus-inspired robotics has grown up especially with the OCTOPUS project, which demonstrated the use of soft materials for building robots and the successful application of biological working principles in robotics. This field has however enlarged its scope to a wider soft robotics community, which aims at investigating the next-generation robots, where soft parts allow to embody intelligence and obtain effective behaviour in natural environments. The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has recently started a Technical Committee on Soft Robotics, which gathers scientists in this field and provides opportunity for discussion within the robotics community. At European level, the FET Open programme of the European Commission is funding the RoboSoft Coordination Action, aiming at consolidating the soft robotics community, providing events, initiatives, and concrete actions for discussing and coordinating the scientific challenges, for stimulating the take-up of results towards innovation, and for educating young researchers in soft robotics science and technology.
