Koichi Suzumori

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Tokyo Institute of Technology | TITech ·  Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The McKibben muscle, widely employed in antagonistic drive robots, exhibits approximately 20% contraction under pneumatic pressure but lacks crucial passive extensibility. Previous attempts to achieve passive extensibility resulted in reduced overall contraction ratios due to the series connection of elongation and contraction sections. This study...

Animal muscles have complex, three-dimensional structures with fibers oriented in various directions. The tongue, in particular, features a highly intricate muscular system composed of four intrinsic muscles and several types of extrinsic muscles, enabling flexible and diverse movements essential for feeding, swallowing, and speech production. Repl...

The intricate interplay within the musculoskeletal system is crucial in biomechanics and orthopedics, particularly in animal locomotion. Conventional musculoskeletal models often oversimplify muscles as mere connections between skeletal points, disregarding radial variations during muscle contraction or relaxation that impact the surrounding tissue...

Biomimicry is a major driving force behind robot research. Many studies and robot developments have been conducted so far, but robotics is still unable to move away from mechanical movements and functions. The main reason for this is that conventional robotics has replaced living creatures' bodies with a collection of simple mechanical parts that m...

The McKibben muscle can produce a high force-to-mass ratio, beneficial for various applications in the soft mechatronics field. The thin McKibben muscle, which has a small diameter, has the advantage of a high force-to-mass ratio and sufficient flexibility for use in a bent state. This flexibility permits the realization of flexible mechatronics. H...

A tensegrity-based system is a promising approach for dynamic exploration of uneven, unpredictable, and confined environments. However, implementing such systems presents challenges in state recognition. In this study, we introduce a 6-strut tensegrity structure integrated with 24 multimodal strain sensors, employing a deep learning model to achiev...

Methods utilizing mechanical structures or chemical reactions to simplify complex control systems (such as solenoid valves required for pneumatically driven soft actuators) have been gaining interest. However, movements developed from these approaches are limited to the combined abilities of the robot's components. That is to say, adapting a robot'...

Soft robotics, including soft grippers and manipulators, are increasingly required to function more adaptively and securely in unknown environments. However, conventional soft pneumatic grippers often grasp and hold objects via the active bending of multiple fingers, making it challenging to grip and hold, for example, spiny objects safely because...

A tensegrity-based system is a promising approach for dynamic exploration of uneven and unpredictable environments, particularly, space exploration. However, implementing such systems presents challenges in terms of intelligent aspects: state recognition, wireless monitoring, human interaction, and smart analyzing and advising function. Here, we in...

Soft robots are prone to damage when they come into contact with sharp objects, decreasing their functionality. Self-repairing soft robots have great potential to restore their functionality after the damage has been repaired. However, for certain damages wherein it is difficult to reconnect the cut surfaces, the existing self-repairing soft robots...

Hydraulic artificial muscles offer superior performance compared to most pneumatic artificial muscles, but their suitability in multi-DOF robotics remains unverified. We fabricated a 7-DOF power soft robot spanning over 1.5 m using 29 McKibben hydraulic artificial muscles. We analyzed the proposed robot's workspace, payload capacity, and compliance...

Fecal incontinence, arising from a myriad of pathogenic mechanisms, has attracted considerable global attention. Despite its significance, the replication of the defecatory system for studying fecal incontinence mechanisms remains limited largely due to social stigma and taboos. Inspired by the rectum's functionalities, we have developed a soft rob...

Soft robots hold the potential for use in disaster sites where it is difficult to predict the external environment and the manipulation of irregularly shaped heavy objects is required. However, existing soft robots possess the low load capacity. Therefore, we propose a vine-like, power soft gripper that grasps an object by wrapping it, and we fabri...

Introduction: Robotic exoskeletons are emerging technologies that have demonstrated their effectiveness in assisting with Activities of Daily Living. However, kinematic disparities between human and robotic joints can result in misalignment between humans and exoskeletons, leading to discomfort and potential user injuries. Methods: In this paper, w...

Vertebrates achieve a high degree of flexibility and skillful performance via a musculoskeletal system consisting of multiple joints. These joints are simultaneously driven by some multi-articular muscles, which run over two or more joints and synchronize the musculoskeletal system. However, when multi-articular muscles contract, buckling may occur...

Significant progress has been achieved in the development of tensegrity robots with rolling capabilities. However, because rolling robots operate passively due to gravity, they are limited to certain environments. So, our aim is to enhance the versatility of tensegrity robots by modularizing a six-bar tensegrity structure, enabling the robot to ope...

We will discuss typical soft actuators in this chapter. In the overview, we showed that actuators are generally divided into equilibrium and non-equilibrium types in terms of energy dissipation and efficiency. We introduce the following categories of soft actuators: fluidic actuators, electroactive polymer actuators, thermomechanical actuators, and...

McKibben artificial muscles are used in many musculoskeletal robots because they have characteristics similar to those of natural skeletal muscles in terms of the contraction ratio and force generated. However, they differ from natural skeletal muscles in that they cannot perform passive elongation movements (referred to as “back-stretching” in thi...

Emerging actuators with various soft materials and a traveling wave motion are frequently discussed. Various configurations have been proposed and their resulting performances investigated, but it remains challenging to realize large strokes. This study presents an experimentally validated nonlinear finite element model to predict the deformation p...

Emerging soft actuators with various soft materials and traveling-wave motion have been frequently discussed. Various configurations and the resulting performances have been proposed, and it is very challenging for soft actuators in realizing large strokes. This study presents an experimentally validated nonlinear finite element model to predict th...

Active textiles have shown promising applications in soft robotics owing to their tunable stiffness and design flexibility. Given the breadth of the design space for planar and spatial arrangements of these woven structures, a rigorous and generalizable characterisation of these systems is not yet available. In order to characterize the response of...

Tensegrity structures have been actively studied in recent years because they are lightweight, compliant, and flexible, which are properties not typically found in conventional robots. This structure can be modularized to create soft robots that operate in unknown environments such as cave or space with more complex and effective behavior. The basi...

Pneumatic artificial muscles have some advantages. Especially, the flexibility of artificial muscles contributes to compose novel mechanisms. Authors succeeded in manufacturing novel soft mechanisms that are composed of only woven artificial muscles and strings. We called this mechanism active textile. The structure is uniformed with woven artifici...

We developed a simulator to practice the digital disimpaction technique, a kind of excretory care that is commonly performed by home-care nurses in Japan. The key point of this study is that the requirements for creating a simulation model were not known in advance, so we adopted a rapid prototyping method, in which product development is carried o...

In recent years, the improved response of hydraulic directional flow control valves and the miniaturization and weight reduction of hydraulic actuators have facilitated their application to robots, and research and development of hydraulically driven robots has been actively conducted. Hydraulic robots have large payload and ability to carry and to...

Quadruped robots are expected to contribute to a variety of applications such as inspection, search and rescue, work support, and transportation due to their mobility and stability. Among them, hydraulic-driven robots are differentiated from electromagnetic-driven quadruped robots in terms of their large payload and ability to carry and tow heavy o...

Removal of support materials is a major issue in 3D printing. In this paper, we propose a new method of molding rubber structures by using water or ice as support members or molds. After fabricating ice support members or mold in the freezer through Micro Block Assembly method, liquid rubber is poured in it and solidified in the freezer. Then, taki...

This paper describes the behavior of tensegrity structures under axial loading. We have previously developed a tensegrity structure that can expand and contract significantly by integrating it with a thin McKibben-type artificial muscle. By applying axial loading to this structure, the axial force characteristics of the structure can be obtained. S...

In this study, we created a jellyfish healing robot to solve the problem of abandonment of breeding, and tested its operation. Thin McKibben artificial muscles are flexible and can be driven in a bent position. The jellyfish healing robot was designed using composite components combining thin McKibben artificial muscles and silicone rubber. The jel...

Sit-to-stand (STS) is one of the most demanding activities of daily living, especially for older adults. In this study, we propose a pneumatic soft exosuit for sit to stand assist. The proposed exosuit is powered by variable stiffness pneumatic muscle (VSPM), which can freely deform while deflated, but straightens when inflated. This allows the VSP...

The purpose of this research is to develop an elephant trunk shaped power soft robotic arm with both high power and flexibility. Our proposed arm consists of three elements: hydraulic artificial muscles to drive the arm, a compressive stress support component reinforced with fabric, and a gripper reinforced with knit. In this paper, We fabricated p...

Being soft imparts a functionality of body compliance, thereby enhancing the range of actuation and adaptability to unstructured environments. The present study focuses on the development of a multi-balloon dielectric elastomer actuator to provide a traveling-wave for the linear transportation of objects. The actuator consists of an electrode-patte...

Tendon-driven mechanism enables to realize a long-reach robot arm to inspect in industrial plants. However, a large elastic elongation of tendons due to gravitational joint torque makes joint control unstable. In this paper, we proposed a planning method to search for a path that includes only stable postures. The stability of the joint angle was f...

In this study, we investigate the applicability of the plastic parts made by FDM 3D printer to a trocoid gear reducer, which is expected to reduce the weight. A trochoidal gear reducer with a reduction ratio of 30 was developed. The part was developed using a resin material with excellent mechanical strength, nylon resin reinforced with carbon shor...

In this project, we aimed to imitate the musculoskeletal system of a dog’s hindlimb and investigate the effect of constraints by the fascia in locomotion. Thin McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles were attached to the dog’s hindlimb skeleton model, referred to as its anatomical structure. A musculoskeletal robot with an animal-like driving system...

The scope of application of 3D printing has been expanding due to the diversification of materials that can be used. However, the design of parts manufactured by 3D printing depends on the individual know-how, which raises the threshold for the introduction of 3D printing. In this study, we propose two methods for applying 3D printing to industry:...

An ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) is a polymer actuator that bends when a voltage is applied. In this paper, we proposed a method for producing a three-dimensional IPMC by three-dimensionally molding an ion exchange resin using a water-soluble support material and plating it with gold. The proposed method has made it possible to manufacture I...

Hydraulic actuators have a much higher power density than their electromagnetic counterparts. However, traditional hydraulic systems are powered using a centralized hydraulic unit that operates continuously regardless of the conditions of the actuators. This results in low power efficiency. Electrohydrostatic actuators, on the other hand, combine a...

In the field of food processing and production processes, serving is still done manually by people in many cases. To solve the problem of quantitative serving, which is one of the challenges of robotic operations, we have developed an end-effector that can grip only one spaghetti. In this paper, we propose a method of attaching several small finger...

The demand for collaborative robots is expected to increase in the future due to their high adapt-ability. However, most of collaborative robots available in the market are driven by a combination of electromagnetic motors and reduction gears, and thus the weight of the arm itself tends to become larger in order to increase its payload. This study...

We proposed a long-reach lightweight articulated arm ”Hiryu-III” using weight-compensation with thrusters and a wire-pulley system. This robot uses a wire-pulley system to keep the thruster horizontally, however the elastic deformation of the plastic tensioner causes insufficient rigidity of the pitch axis. We changed the fastening method between t...

Self-excited electrostatic actuators are suitable for small robots because they have a simple structure, are driven by DC voltage, and the force density increases with decreasing size. We have combined this actuator with a PLZT element, which has the property of generating a high voltage when irradiated with ultraviolet light, to fabricate a wirele...

In recent years, the use of 3D printed plastic parts has been attracting attention. However, due to their inferior dimension accuracy, stiffness and strength, there are few examples of using them as structural parts for robots that are subjected to loads. In this study, we developed a quadruped robot, TITAN-E1, in order to verify the applicability...

Textile is soft, adaptable to shape, elastic, and lighter than metal. Taking advantage of these characteristics, textile is used as a material for soft robots. The authors thought that by using a cloth made of high-strength fibers, it would be possible to create a robot that takes advantage of its strength and durability in addition to its flexibil...

We proposed a model in which three small cranes are used to form a three-dimensional truss structure to perform construction work in a coordinated manner. In this model, the workspace and payload depend only on the strength of the structure because the structure does not tip over as in conventional cranes and excavators. This makes it possible to l...

One of the purposes of exploration and inspection of nuclear facilities is to understand the distribution of nuclear materials in reactor. This is because if the elements can be characterized on-site, decommissioning can be carried out efficiently. Therefore, it is necessary to attach a sensor to the tip of the long manipulator to perform on-site e...

This paper describes a soft robot that aims to move forward in an unknown space as it recognizes and adapts to the spatial shape of the environment. It was previously reported that soft tensegrity and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) can be used to realize tensegrity structure shape recognition. In this study, a tensegrity robot was designed to activ...

Soft actuators made of flexible materials, such as rubber and polymers, have possibilities that conventional solid actuators do not have, such as no unnecessary force is applied and the object is not damaged, and the flexible mechanism allows quick operation. In this paper, we describe a transport mechanism that we believe can be achieved by using...

To date, many robots have been researched and developed for the purpose of investigation and support at disaster sites, and quadruped robots are expected to play an important role because of their superiority in traversing rough terrain and stability. At present, there are many quadruped robots driven by electromagnetic actuators for investigation...

Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) is planar and it is necessary to apply AC voltage to both sides of the IPMC in order to drive it repeatedly. Since the generated force is small, the interference caused by the wiring, critically limits the motion. In this study, I consider the following two issues separately in order to drive an independent IPMC...

Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) has the features of high responsiveness, and can be driven in water by low voltage. Generally, IPMC actuators are fabricated using Nafion sheets, which are an ion-exchange resin, and are driven by bending a flat structure. However, in order to realize more complex motion and shape, it is necessary to fabricate 3...

Soft robotic is a rapidly developing field exploiting biomimetic design principles, novel actuation concepts, and manufacturing techniques. The present study focuses on the development of a spiral pneumatic rubber actuator which can transport objects placed on the surface of actuator. The actuator consists of multiple air chambers and provides sequ...

This study presents the effects of surface roughness on the adhesion strength of plasma-treated rubbers that are widely used in soft robotics. The rubbers are designed with 11 molds of different patterns and fabricated from liquid silicones for mutual comparison. Several specimens with nonperiodic and periodic surface waveforms are quantitatively a...

Hydraulics is a promising technology for robots. However, traditional hydraulic infrastructures are often large and power-inefficient, with large power sources that hinder mobility. In contrast, electro-hydrostatic actuators are relatively power efficient, but their cost and weight can be excessive in systems with a higher number of degrees of free...

Mita M, Suzumori K, Kudo D, Saito K, Chida S, Hatakeyama K, Shimada Y, Miyakoshi N. Utility of a wearable robot for the fingers that uses pneumatic artificial muscles for patients with post-stroke spasticity. Jpn J Compr Rehabil Sci 2022; 13: 12-16. Objective: We investigated the utility of a wearable robot for the fingers that we developed using p...

Artificial multiarticular musculoskeletal systems consisting of serially connected links driven by monoarticular and multiarticular muscles, which are often inspired by vertebrates, enable robots to elicit dynamic, elegant, and flexible movements. However, serial links driven by multiarticular muscles can cause unstable motion (e.g., buckling). The...

There are many studies on the antagonistic actuation of pneumatic artificial muscles; however, hydraulic artificial muscles have been rarely studied. The purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of the antagonistic actuation of hydraulic muscles under different servovalve configurations. A dual-servovalve configuration can independen...

This study aims to develop three-dimensional soft robots for special situations that cannot be easily resolved by normal hard-metal robots. We use an ion polymer–metal composite actuator, which is a soft actuator, moved using 1–10 V. The objective of our study is twofold: first, to develop a method to create 3D soft robots; and second, to develop a...

Since 2018, a project of MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, titled “Science of Soft Robots: Interdisciplinary integration of mechatronics, material science, and bio-computing” has been in progress. This major research project on soft robotics in Japan has a research period of 5 years. An outline of the project is present...

The science of soft robots, or soft robotics, is currently one of the most active fields in robotics. While traditional robots consist of rigid bodies, powerful servomotors, and carefully coded programs to realize power, precision, and reliability, soft robots consist of soft and flexible bodies, actuators, and intelligence for adaptability. They a...

The neck of a giraffe has excellent characteristics that can serve as a good alternative for designing a large robotic mechanism. For example, the neck can rapidly move when performing necking, a motion where the giraffes strike each other’s necks. Furthermore, the neck of a giraffe helps prevent impacts and adapts to the shape and hardness of the...

The primary role of a robot exploring an unknown space is to investigate the state and the spatial shape of the environment. We have designed a soft robot that aims to move forward in an unknown space as it recognizes and adapts to the spatial shape of the environment. We previously reported that soft tensegrity and recurrent neural network can be...

Soft robotics aims at creating systems with improved performance of movement and adaptability in unknown, challenging, environments and with higher level of safety during interactions with humans. This Roadmap on Soft Robotics covers selected aspects for the design of soft robots significantly linked to the area of multifunctional materials, as the...

We proposed a long-reach lightweight articulated arm "Hiryu-III" using weight-compensation with thrusters and a wire-pulley system. The robot developed in this study equipped with two thrusters for weight-compensation and pitch axis motion control in each joint. The previous study, Hiryu-II, had the disadvantage of low rigidity around the roll axis...

Legged robots have an advantage for moving on rough terrain. Especially, quadruped robots have high posture stability. However, actuators of many legged robots are actuated by an electromagnetic motor and a speed reducer, and are vulnerable to impact. On the other hand, hydraulic actuators have a simple structure and a small number of parts, thus t...

Needs of new materials that can be used a mechanical parts for industrial robots are increasing. 3D printers can be a very effective solution to this problem, as they can be used with a wide variety of materials, from metals to super engineering plastics, and can produce complicated 3-dimensional parts at low cost. However, when 3D printers are use...

We have developed a rugged terrain mobile robot equipped with an elastic telescopic arm for the purpose of improving moving performance on rugged terrain. The problem of the elastic telescopic arm is the low tension transfer efficiency of the passive pulley. In order to investigate the tension transfer efficiency, an experiment was conducted to obt...

An ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) actuator is one of the lightweight and flexible polymer actuators. A method of three-dimensionally forming IPMC (PF-IPMC) by using paper or cloth has been proposed. We have proposed a method of forming a three-dimensional ion exchange resin by forming the ion exchange resin using water-soluble paper and then...

Today, the demand for industrial robots continues to grow. In order for industrial robots to make further progress, they need to reduce costs. One way to achieve this is to adapt new materials to robots in order to reduce power consumption by reducing weight. In order to realize the use of resin materials for FDM 3D printers as these new materials,...

The leg configurations of multi-legged robots are classified into mammal and insect types based on the arrangement of the degrees of freedom. However, few studies have quantitatively compared the two leg configurations. We compared the power consumption of static walking while changing body height and foot trajectory. The results of the analysis sh...

In recent years, powered exoskeletons are getting more and more attention. Most of the existing powered exoskeletons use electric motors as actuators which usually make them bulky and be sensitive to impact and vibration. To solve these problems, we tried to use Hydraulic artificial muscle (HAM), an innovative McKibben type artificial muscle, as an...

Decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is a national urgent problem in Japan. To analyze and characterize the fuel debris distributed in Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV), the optical fiber LIBS analysis method can be a promising solution. To deploy the LIBS sensor to the RPV, I have developed (1) a lightweight telescopic boom that...

We developed the hydraulic quadruped robot, “Tough Runner”, for the purpose of opening up the possibilities of hydraulic quadruped robots. In this paper, we demonstrated that this robot is able to accomplish simple missions, specifically reaching a target from an arbitrary position by being combined with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS...

This paper describes an investigation of the position accuracy of a long-reach coupled tendon-driven robot arm. An operational test of the arm was conducted in a full-scale field. Tip positions estimated using joint angles were compared with the tip position measured by the laser scanner. As a result, the tip position error in the yaw bending postu...

Most of the robot arms currently in use consist of an electromagnetic motor and a reduction gear. However, they are not suitable for use in environments such as construction sites. In order to solve this problem, a compact and high-torque hydraulic robot arm was developed in our laboratory. In this study, we aim to apply this robot arm to collabora...