Particle robots A new specie of hybrid bio-inspired robotics
This presents a novel robotic design for enhancing mobility in diverse environments, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing bio-inspired and spherical robot concepts.
The paper introduces a hybrid bio-inspired robot called 'particle robot' that combines features from sea urchins and viruses with spherical mobile robots, enabling it to switch between fast rolling on land and walking on varied terrains like snow and rocks.
Inspired by a couple of simple organisms without eyes, neither ears. This paper presents a novel hybrid bionic robot, called "particle robot", which mix a macro-organism and a micro-organism in the same robot. On one hand, an interesting rather boring animal, the biological Echinoids (sea urchins) is mixed with the viruses micro-organisms, in specific the rotaviruses; together with spherical mobile robots. Analogously, from a pure robotic perspective, this bio-inspired robot can be seen as a spherical mobile robot wearing an actuated exoskeleton. The robot has two main configurations: when the spines are contracted it becomes a spherical mobile robot able to move in a fast pace on land, embedding all spherical mobile robots properties. On the other hand, when the spines or legs are extended in a controlled pattern, it can walk on flat surfaces as well as move on snow and over rocks as a bionic sea urchin. The spines of the robot are telescopic linear actuators, which combines soft and hard 3D print materials to make the actuation unit flexible for compressing it in minimal space and rigid for lifting the robot.