Development of ameba-inspired crawler mechanism using worm gear

In Japan, since the great earthquake, attention has surrounded development of disaster victim relief activity using robots. Development of a robot that is adaptive to various environments in irregular places, rubble, and confined areas is needed. A wheel robot, a snake-like robot, a crawler type robot and a multi-leg robot are all described in the relevant literature as rescue robots that are currently studied. Although these robots have high efficiency and/or high ground-covering ability, they need comparatively large space to move. In this study, a cylindrical crawler robot based on worm-rack mechanism, which does not need large space to move and which has high ground-covering ability, is proposed. This report describes its structure, driven mechanism, design, prototype, and experimental evaluation.