Towards dynamic trot gait locomotion: Design, control, and experiments with Cheetah-cub, a compliant quadruped robot (original) (raw)

Design, Simulation, Fabrication and Planning of Bio- Inspired Quadruped Robot [May 2014]

This work reports design, simulation, fabrication, and planning of bio-inspired quadruped robot. This dissertation deals with two types of bio-inspired quadruped locomotion patterns, namely, mammalian and reptilian. Legged locomotion is one of the most successful locomotion patterns found in the nature. Quadruped walking in many mammals and reptiles have made them very successful in surviving against tough environments such as uneven terrains. Nature evolved legged locomotion over half a billion years. It should be noted that the biological evolution favoured legged locomotion instead of wheeled locomotion in spite of wheeled locomotion being fast. This is because more than half of Earth’s landmass has highly rough terrain and can be traversed by legged rather than wheeled locomotion. We thus take inspiration from the nature to develop legged robots that can traverse on rough terrains and has advantage over wheeled robots. We developed alligator-inspired robot at the Mechatronics la...

Kinematic primitives for walking and trotting gaits of a quadruped robot with compliant legs

Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2014

In this work we research the role of body dynamics in the complexity of kinematic patterns in a quadruped robot with compliant legs. Two gait patterns, lateral sequence walk and trot, along with leg length control patterns of different complexity were implemented in a modular, feed-forward locomotion controller. The controller was tested on a small, quadruped robot with compliant, segmented leg design, and led to self-stable and self-stabilizing robot locomotion. In-air stepping and on-ground locomotion leg kinematics were recorded, and the number and shapes of motion primitives accounting for 95% of the variance of kinematic leg data were extracted. This revealed that kinematic patterns resulting from feed-forward control had a lower complexity (in-air stepping, 2-3 primitives) than kinematic patterns from on-ground locomotion (4 primitives), although both experiments applied identical motor patterns. The complexity of on-ground kinematic patterns had increased, through ground contact and mechanical entrainment. The complexity of observed kinematic on-ground data matches those reported from level-ground locomotion data of legged animals. Results indicate that a very low complexity of modular, rhythmic, feed-forward motor control is sufficient for level-ground locomotion in combination with passive compliant legged hardware.

Design, Simulation, Fabrication and Planning of BioInspired Quadruped Robot

This work reports design, simulation, fabrication, and planning of bio-inspired quadruped robot. This dissertation deals with two types of bio-inspired quadruped locomotion patterns, namely, mammalian and reptilian. Legged locomotion is one of the most successful locomotion patterns found in the nature. Quadruped walking in many mammals and reptiles have made them very successful in surviving against tough environments such as uneven terrains. Nature evolved legged locomotion over half a billion years. It should be noted that the biological evolution favoured legged locomotion instead of wheeled locomotion in spite of wheeled locomotion being fast. This is because more than half of Earth’s landmass has highly rough terrain and can be traversed by legged rather than wheeled locomotion. We thus take inspiration from the nature to develop legged robots that can traverse on rough terrains and has advantage over wheeled robots. We developed alligator-inspired robot at the Mechatronics laboratory, IIT Patna. Each of the four legs has two revolute joints representing the hip (yaw) and knee (roll) respectively, which are actuated by servo motors, thereby imparting eight degrees of freedom to the robot.

Development of a Biomimetic Quadruped Robot

Journal of Bionic Engineering, 2007

This paper presents the design and prototype of a small quadruped robot whose walking motion is realized by two piezocomposite actuators. In the design, biomimetic ideas are employed to obtain the agility of motions and sustainability of a heavy load. The design of the robot legs is inspired by the leg configuration of insects, two joints (hip and knee) of the leg enable two basic motions, lifting and stepping. The robot frame is designed to have a slope relative to the horizontal plane, which makes the robot move forward. In addition, the bounding locomotion of quadruped animals is implemented in the robot. Experiments show that the robot can carry an additional load of about 100 g and run with a fairly high velocity. The quadruped prototype can be an important step towards the goal of building an autonomous mobile robot actuated by piezocomposite actuators.

Comparing the effect of different spine and leg designs for a small bounding quadruped robot

2015

We present Lynx-robot, a quadruped, modular, compliant machine. It alternately features a directly actuated, single-joint spine design, or an actively supported, passive compliant, multi-joint spine configuration. Both spine configurations bend in the sagittal plane. This study aims at characterizing these two, largely different spine concepts, for a bounding gait of a robot with a three segmented, pantograph leg design. An earlier, similar-sized, bounding, quadruped robot named Bobcat with a two-segment leg design and a directly actuated, single-joint spine design serves as a comparison robot, to study and compare the effect of the leg design on speed, while keeping the spine design fixed. Both proposed spine designs (single rotatory and active and multi-joint compliant) reach moderate, self-stable speeds.

Self-stabilising quadrupedal running by mechanical design

2009

Dynamic stability allows running animals to maintain preferred speed during locomotion over rough terrain. It appears that rapid disturbance rejection is an emergent property of the mechanical system. In running robots, simple motor control seems to be effective in the negotiation of rough terrain when used in concert with a mechanical system that stabilises passively. Spring-like legs are a means for providing self-stabilising characteristics against external perturbations.

A Novel Design of a Quadruped Robot for Research Purposes

International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 2014

This paper presents the design of a novel quadruped robot. The proposed design is characterized by a simple, modular design, and easy interfacing capabilities. The robot is built mostly from off-the-shelf components. The design includes four 3-DOF legs, the robot body and its electronics. The proposed robot is able to traverse rough terrain while carrying additional payloads. Such payloads can include both sensors and computational hardware. We present the robot design, the control system, and the forward and inverse kinematics of the robot, as well as experiments that are compared with simulation results.

A new approach for development of quadruped robot based on biological concepts

International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing, 2010

This paper proposes the design and development results of a new quadruped robot. The proposed new quadruped robot has a couple of advantages of flexible locomotion. The quadruped robot is designed and modeled based on a new concept that is the structure model with three segments of quadruped legs. New leg configuration with the simplified operation of four hip actuators is introduced. The posture of the new quadruped robot is more similar to the posture of dog than that of the previous quadruped robots. The objective of this paper is to develop a quadruped robot, which can walk and run in a trot gait with a simple PID controller. Numerical simulation and experimental results are shown to prove the locomotion performance of the proposed controller for the proposed quadruped robot.

Toward Ultra High Speed Locomotors: Design and test of a cheetah robot hind limb

2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2011

High speed robot locomotion is one of the most challenging problems in mobile robots. Fast robots push the limits of mechanical design, control and perception. The cheetah is an existence proof of what the authors term an Ultra-High Speed Locomotor, which can attain speeds of greater than 50 leg lengths per second and can cover 10 meters in a single gait cycle.