Hallucigenia 01: The Next-Generation Robotic Vehicle

Hallcigenia01

Hallucigenia project, jointly coordinated by Leading Edge Design, Corp., CREATIVE BOX Inc. and Future Robotics Technology Center at Chiba Institute of Technology, is a research program aiming to evolve the personal mobility of our daily life from a viewpoint of robotics. (*1)The short-term goal of this project is to propose new styles of transport vehicles through actual developments. As our first step in this research endeavor, we manufactured a mulit-joint vehicle robot, Hallucigenia01, as a concept model of our future mobility.

The primary feature of this vehicle robot is its underbody mechanism (seeFigure1). Composed by eight wheeled leg modules, the underbody mechanism of Hallucigenia01 can produce a wide variety of cruising options, including moving in a side direction, turning centered at its front edge, running over a bump while keeping the body level horizontal and walking.

Specifications

Number of Joints: 24 (3 joints × 8 leg modules)
Number of Actuators: 32 motor units, in total
On-board Sensors: articular angle gauge, wheel control encoder, 3-axial angular sensor, current sensor for motor output measurement

Materials

Main Frame; aluminium alloy
Tires and others; acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene resins

(*1)

  • L.E.D. (Leading Edge Design)
    Design engineering group led by Shunji Yamanaka, an industrial designer. L.E.D. specializes in the development of various types of advanced instruments including the two-thumbs keyboard “tagtype”, Humanoid “morph3”, Issei Miyake’s wristwatch “INSETTO”, and the wireless card ticket examination system “SUICA”, all of which have been developed in recent years.
  • Creative Box
    Design development company, a Nissan fully-owned subsidiary, established in 1987. It develops not only designs of production cars but also trial concept vehicles. The JIKOO, placed on Tokyo Motor Show held on the other day, is one of Creative Box’s products.