Development of Amphibious Humanoid for Behavior Acquisition on Land and Underwater

Abstract

Humanoid research aimed at verifying human movements and substituting for work deals with movement acquisition in various environments to which humans can adapt. On the other hand, water exists as an environment in which humanoids cannot adapt, even though humans adapt and demand work alternatives. Therefore, there is room to construct a platform that can operate underwater and the ground and verify the method of acquiring operation underwater. This study constructs the humanoid that can operate in both land and water environments using modular components that can easily change the body structure. While changing the environment’s force, such as frictional force, water resistance, and buoyancy, the humanoid performed moving movements such as swimming and walking in multiple lands and water settings. Walking motion experiments have shown that the underwater environment’s viscosity effectively reduces the speed of falls and prevents damage in humanoid experiments. We investigated a solution to the problem that humanoids are vulnerable to disturbance in an environment where friction is brutal to obtain through swimming.