For most mammals and vertebrate animals, tail plays an important role for their body providing variant functions to expand their mobility, or as a limb that allows manipulation and gripping. In this work, Arque, we propose an artificial biomimicry-inspired anthropomorphic tail to allow us alter our body momentum for assistive, and haptic feedback applications.
source/image: yamen saraiji
The reason behind creating Arque is to improve movement and balance while the user is moving large objects or balancing the bodyweight while the user attempts to reach items that are heavy and placed at a height. Arque will prove to be extremely beneficial for the elderly who suffer from limited balance & mobility./ yamen saraiji
The proposed tail consists of adjacent joints with a spring-based structure to handle shearing and tangential forces, and allow managing the length and weight of the target tail. The internal structure of the tail is driven by four pneumatic artificial muscles providing the actuation mechanism for the tail tip.
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Here we highlight potential applications for using such prosthetic tail as an extension of human body to provide active momentum alteration in balancing situations, or as a device to alter body momentum for full-body haptic feedback scenarios.This work was accepted for SIGGRAPH 2019 Emerging TechnologiesCredits: Junichi Nabeshima, Kouta Minamizawa, MHD Yamen Saraiji.
