The world's largest robotics conference, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2019), was held from May 20th to 24th in Montreal, Canada. AMOEBA ENERGY exhibited at a startup booth. We demonstrated how a soft robot climbs up and down a steep staircase (a ladder). We presented our perspectives on new business models on future delivery automation in homes and logistics, which will be opend up by this robot.
Until now, in order to get the robot to perform tasks that go over steps and stairs, it was necessary to introduce advanced controls and special mechanisms for that, which led to an increase in development and sales costs. AMOEBA ENERGY has shown that this task can be accomplished very easily by introducing soft sponge (foam rubber) on ground contact areas of tracks of the robot. This material has been used as a dust-proof sponge (sealer) for filling air gaps of car doors and air conditioners to improve air tightness, and the concept of introducing it on the ground contact areas of the robot is as novel as ever. The sponge increases the frictional force by freely deforming when fitting to the ground, and enables to go over arbitrary non-flat irregular grounds. In addition, since it can absorb the impact of landing, it also plays a role of protecting the robot body and floor (ground) without damaging them. This new approach received high evaluation and sympathy from many robot researchers as a clever idea to achieve the goal task at low cost.
A lot of people showed strong interest on our new soft robot, and we could exchange many valuable information about potential applications and business directions with them. We were able to know the existence of some needs that we did not foresee, and recognized the width and depth of novel research subjects related to the understanding and development of soft robots. AMOEBA ENERGY's robot, which gained popularity at the venue, was also featured in tv news on Canada's largest commercial television station, CTV news, suggesting its high impact on the audience's recognition of future robotics.
