Motion Analysis of Ciliary Micro-Hopping Locomotion for an Asteroid Exploration Robot with Design Parameters of Cilia

Abstract

A small mobile robot plays an important role in asteroid exploration missions because it can be expected to obtain more detailed scientific findings by moving over an asteroid surface. Robotic mobility on such an asteroid is challenging due to micro-gravity environment on it. As one of the practical solutions to the challenge, we have proposed ciliary micro-hopping locomotion. This mechanism utilizes an elastic force exerted by cilia, and an eccentric motor inside the robot for an actuation source. Although several fundamental studies on the ciliary micro-hopping locomotion in micro-gravity were addressed, the influence of design parameters of the cilia, such as cilia's length or inclination angle, has not been quantitatively clarified. Therefore, in this paper we present experimental motion analysis with various cilia's parameters, and then, show comparative discussions of the experimental data and simulation results.