Crawling and Jumping Soft Robots Heads: Shinichi Hirai Contact: Yasuaki Matsumoto Date: 2002 - 2009 Mailing address: Dept. Robotics, Ritsumeikan Univ. Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577, Japan Supported by: NEDO 21st Century Robot Challenge Program Associated lab/group: Hirai Lab. (Dept. Textile Eng., Shinshu Univ.)

Project Description

In this research, we will develop a robot capable of rough terrain locomotion by its rolling and jumping. A robot consisting of deformable soft body and flexible actuators can roll and jump on a ground by the deformation of its deformable body.

2017/10/20	Invited Presentation Soft Robotics for Locomotion and Manipulation in Special Session Soft Robotics at 17th Int. Conf. on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS 2017).
2010/5/26	Biomimetic Soft Morphing Workshop at Seoul National University
2008/12/6	Mr. Matsuyama received SICE 2007 SI Division Young Researcher Encouragement Award for his paper Mechanics of Jumping via Body Deformation.
2008/7/18	Demonstration Day for high school students.
2008/6/23	Visited EPFL and had two seminars. How Softness Contributes to Human Dexterity organized by Professor Bleuler Jumping via Deformation organized by Professor Floreano
2006/12/16	Mechanical Energy Analysis of Jumping by Body Deformation of Soft Circular Robot received SICE SI2006 Presentation Award.
2005/7/26-8/7	Demonstration on Crawling and Jumping Soft Robot KOHARO at the Robot Station, Expo 2005 Aichi Japan. (HP)
2005/6/9-19	Demonstration on Crawling and Jumping Soft Robot KOHARO at Prototype Robot Exhibition, Expo 2005 Aichi Japan. (photo diary) (demonstration)
2004/7/28	"Crawling and Jumping of a Deformable Robot" was introduced in Mainichi Shimbun 2004/7/28 "Science TODAT".
2004/7/4	Robotic wheels that just keep rolling in New Scientists.
2004/6/19	Yuuta Sugiyama was offered the IFRR Student Fellowship to present his article "Crawling and Jumping of a Deformable Robot" in ISER2004 at Singapore.
2004/6/17	"Crawling and Jumping of a Deformable Robot" was introduced in Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun 2004/6/17.
2004/6/3	Project "Crawling and Jumping by a Deformable Soft Robot" was accepted to the NEDO 21st Century Robot Challenge Program.

Jumping of Spherical Soft Robot

Hill-climbing of Spherical Soft Robot

Rolling of Circular Soft Robot

Hill-climbing of Circular Soft Robot

Personnel

	Name	Title	Degree
	Yasuaki Matsumoto	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Masayuki Miyazaki	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Hisashi Nakanishi	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Yoshinari Matsuyama	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Ayumi Shiotsu	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Yuuta Sugiyama	Graduated	Master of Eng.

Publications

• Yuuta Sugiyama and Shinichi Hirai, Crawling and Jumping by a Deformable Robot, Marcelo H. Ang Jr. and Oussama Khatib eds., Experimental Robotics IX, 978-3-540-28816-9, Springer, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics 21, pp.281-290, 10.1007/11552246_27, 2006

• Yuuta Sugiyama and Shinichi Hirai, Crawling and Jumping by a Deformable Robot, International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol.25, No.5-6, pp.603-620, 10.1177/0278364906065386, May, 2006

• Yasuaki Matsumoto, Hisashi Nakanishi, and Shinichi Hirai, Rolling Locomotion of a Deformable Soft Robot with Built-in Power Source, Proc. 11th Int. Conf. Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines (CLAWAR 2008), pp.365-372, Coimbra, Portugal, Sept. 8-10, 2008
• Masayuki Miyazaki and Shinichi Hirai, Jumping via Robot Body Deformation - Mechanics and Mechanism for Higher Jumping -, Proc. 11th Int. Conf. Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines (CLAWAR 2008), pp.373-380, Coimbra, Portugal, Sept. 8-10, 2008
• Yoshinari Matsuyama and Shinichi Hirai, Analysis of Circular Robot Jumping by Body Deformation, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp.1968-1973, 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363610, Rome, Italy, Apr. 10-14, 2007
• Nakanishi Hisashi and Shinichi Hirai, Passive Crawling of a Soft Robot, 2007 IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM2007), 10.1109/AIM.2007.4412483, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Sept. 4-7, 2007
• Yuuta Sugiyama, Ayumi Shiotsu, Masashi Yamanaka, and Shinichi Hirai, Circular/Spherical Robots for Crawling and Jumping, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp.3595-3600, 10.1109/ROBOT.2005.1570667, Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 18-22, 2005
• Ayumi Shiotsu, Masafumi Yamanaka, Yoshinari Matsuyama, Hisashi Nakanishi, Yoshiyuki Hara, Tatsuhiko Tsuboi, Takashi Iwade, Yuuta Sugiyama, and Shinichi Hirai, Crawling and Jumping Soft Robot KOHARO, Proc. 36th Int. Symp. on Robotics, Tokyo, Japan, Nov. 29 - Dec. 1, 2005
• Yuuta Sugiyama and Shinichi Hirai, Crawling and Jumping by a Deformable Robot, Proc. Int. Symp. on Experimental Robotics, Singapore, June 18-21, 2004
• Yuuta Sugiyama and Shinichi Hirai, Crawling and Jumping of Deformable Soft Robot, Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol.4, pp.3276-3281, 10.1109/IROS.2004.1389922, Sendai, Japan, Sept. 28 - Oct. 2, 2004

Notes

Album	Soft robot with built-in power source (mpg 8.5MB)	Jump from Cap shape (mpg 4.0MB)	Jump from Cup shape (mpg 3.5MB)	Jump from Peanut shape (mpg 3.6MB)
Jump from Dish shape (mpg 4.3MB)	Spherical soft robot jumping (mpg 7.3MB)	Spherical soft robot hill-climbing< (mpg 6.9MB)	Circular soft robot crawling (mpg 6.4MB)	Circular soft robot hill-climbing (mpg 2.4MB)
KOHARO EXPO MC demonstration (mpg 181MB)

Related Sites

• Virtual Rheology Project
• Demonstration in Prototype Robot Exhibition, Expo 2005 Aichi, Japan
• Prototype Robot Exhibition, Expo 2005 Aichi, Japan
• Robot Station, Expo 2005 Aichi, Japan
• Sodaplay