Ants are six-legged insects that can carry loads ten times heavier than their body weight. Since having six-legs, they are intrinsically stable. They are powerful and can carry heavy loads. For these reasons, in this paper a new parallel kinematic structure is proposed for a six-legged ant robot. The mechanical structure is designed and optimized in Solidworks. The mechanism has six legs and only two DC motors actuate the six legs so from mechanical point of view the design is an optimal one. The robot is lightweight and semiautonomous due to using wireless modules. This feature makes this robot to be suitable to be used in social robotics and rescue robotics applications. The transmitter program is implemented in supervisor computer using LabVIEW and a microcontroller is used as the main controller. The electronic board is designed and tested in Proteus Professional and the PCB board is implemented in Altium Designer. Microcontroller programming is done in Code Vision.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
Industrial manipulators do not collapse under their own weight when powered off due to the friction in their joints. Although these mechanism are effective for stiff position control of pick-and-place, they are inappropriate for legged robots that must rapidly regulate compliant interactions with the environment. However, no metric exists to quantify the robot's performance degradation due to mechanical losses in the actuators and transmissions. This paper provides a fundamental formulation that uses the mechanical efficiency of transmissions to quantify the effect of power losses in the mecha…
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
Industrial manipulators do not collapse under their own weight when powered off due to the friction in their joints. Although these mechanism are effective for stiff position control of pick-and-place, they are inappropriate for legged robots which must rapidly regulate compliant interactions with the environment. However, no metric exists to quantify the robot's perform degradation due to mechanical losses in the actuators. This letter provides a novel formulation which describes how the efficiency of individual actuators propagate to the equations of motion of the whole robot. We quantitativ…
FZI Research Center for Information Technology（弗劳恩霍夫研究所信息技术研究中心）；Machine Intelligence and Robotics Lab at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT)（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院机械智能与机器人实验室）
International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore（班加罗尔国际信息技术学院）
Developing a framework for the locomotion of a six-legged robot or a hexapod is a complex task that has extensive hardware and computational requirements. In this paper, we present a bio-inspired framework for the locomotion of a hexapod. Our locomotion model draws inspiration from the structure of a cockroach, with its fairly simple central nervous system, and results in our model being computationally inexpensive with simpler control mechanisms. We consider the limb morphology for a hexapod, the corresponding central pattern generators for its limbs, and the inter-limb coordination required …
University of Trento（特伦托大学）；Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna（圣安娜高等学校）；Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems（马克斯·普朗克智能系统研究所）
Robots need lightweight legs for agile locomotion, and intrinsic series elastic compliance has proven to be a major ingredient for energy-efficient locomotion and robust locomotion control. Animals' anatomy and locomotion capabilities emphasize the importance of that lightweight legs and integrated, compact, series elastically actuated for distal leg joints. But unlike robots, animals achieve series elastic actuation by their muscle-tendon units. So far no designs are available that feature all characteristics of a perfect distal legged locomotion actuator; a low-weight and low-inertia design,…
Saratoga High School（萨拉托加高中）；University of Michigan（密歇根大学）
We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness actuators are either complicated or mimicked at low bandwidth through feedback controllers. A robust and simple design is needed to build reliable and cheap robots with animal capabilities. The key insight of our design is attaching torsional springs to timing belts to create a variable stiffness linear spring. In an antagonistic pair, varying the distance b…
University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学）；Norwegian Defence Research Institute（挪威国防研究所）
Legged robots promise higher versatility and the ability to traverse much more difficult terrains than their wheeled counterparts. Even though the use of legged robots have increased drastically in the last few years, they are still not close to the performance seen from legged animals in nature. Robotic legs are typically fairly simple mechanically, and few feature an ankle joint, even though most land mammals have one. The ankle could be a key to better performance and stability for legged robots, and in this paper we investigate how the use of an ankle in a bipedal robot could improve its p…
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering（怀斯生物启发工程研究所）
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the development of small legged robots capable of operation at multiple stride frequencies using multi-degree-of-freedom leg trajectories. Proprioceptive sensing and control is key to extending the capabilities of these robots to a broad range of operating conditions. In this work, we use concomitant sensing for piezoelectric actuation with a computationally efficie…
Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments (LASSIE): Making Every Robotic Step Count in Planetary Exploration
Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute, Oregon State University（协作机器人与智能系统研究所，俄勒冈州立大学）；Department of Geology and Geophysics, Texas A&M University（地质与地球物理系，德克萨斯大学）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California（电气与计算机工程系，南加州大学）；Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania（地球与环境科学系，宾夕法尼亚大学）；Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, Northern Arizona University（天文学与行星科学系，北方亚利桑那大学）；School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology（地球与大气科学学院，佐治亚理工学院）；NASA Marshall Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局马歇尔航天飞行中心）；NASA Johnson Space Center（美国国家航空航天局约翰逊航天中心）；Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania（电气与系统工程系，宾夕法尼亚大学）；Department of Psychology, Temple University（心理学系， Temple 大学）
PAINT: Partner-Agnostic Intent-Aware Cooperative Transport with Legged Robots
Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland（瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院机器人系统实验室）；Computational Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland（瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院计算机器人学实验室）；ETH AI Center, ETH Zurich, Switzerland（瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院ETH人工智能中心）
Agriculture is currently undergoing a robotics revolution, but robots using wheeled or treads suffer from known disadvantages: they are unable to move over rubble and steep or loose ground, and they trample continuous strips of land thereby reducing the viable crop area. Legged robots offer an alternative, but existing commercial legged robots are complex, expensive, and hard to maintain. We propose the use of multilegged robots using low-degree-of-freedom (low-DoF) legs and demonstrate our approach with a lawn pest control task: picking dandelions using our inexpensive and easy to fabricate B…
Ohio State University（俄亥俄州立大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech)（南方科技大学）
The dynamic response of the legged robot locomotion is non-Lipschitz and can be stochastic due to environmental uncertainties. To test, validate, and characterize the safety performance of legged robots, existing solutions on observed and inferred risk can be incomplete and sampling inefficient. Some formal verification methods suffer from the model precision and other surrogate assumptions. In this paper, we propose a scenario sampling based testing framework that characterizes the overall safety performance of a legged robot by specifying (i) where (in terms of a set of states) the robot is …
Fast and Modular Whole-Body Lagrangian Dynamics of Legged Robots with Changing Morphology
Autonomous Space Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory, Carleton University（自主空间机器人与机电实验室，卡尔顿大学）；Mechanical, Industrial, and Mechatronics Engineering Department, Toronto Metropolitan University（机械、工业与机电工程系，多伦多 Metropolitan 大学）
Legged locomotion is commonly studied and expressed as a discrete set of gait patterns, like walk, trot, gallop, which are usually treated as given and pre-programmed in legged robots for efficient locomotion at different speeds. However, fixing a set of pre-programmed gaits limits the generality of locomotion. Recent animal motor studies show that these conventional gaits are only prevalent in ideal flat terrain conditions while real-world locomotion is unstructured and more like bouts of intermittent steps. What principles could lead to both structured and unstructured patterns across mammal…
S2M-Trek: From Single to Multi-Sphere Transport via Per-Frame Deep Sets on a Wheel-Legged Robot
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学机械科学与工程学院）；School of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学数学学院）
ARCSnake V2: Mechanical Adaptations For An Amphibious Multi-Domain Screw-Propelled Snake-Like Robot
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, University of California San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校机械与航空航天工程系）；Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校电气与计算机工程系）
Robotics can be defined as the connection of perception to action. Taking this further, this project aims to drive a robot using an automated computer vision embedded system, connecting the robot's vision to its behavior. In order to implement a color recognition system on the robot, open source tools are chosen, such as Processing language, Android system, Arduino platform and Pixy camera. The constraints are clear: simplicity, replicability and financial viability. In order to integrate Robotics, Computer Vision and Image Processing, the robot is applied on a typical mobile robot's issue: li…
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems（马克斯·普朗克智能系统研究所）；KU Leuven（鲁汶大学）
Most legged robots are built with leg structures from serially mounted links and actuators and are controlled through complex controllers and sensor feedback. In comparison, animals developed multi-segment legs, mechanical coupling between joints, and multi-segmented feet. They run agile over all terrains, arguably with simpler locomotion control. Here we focus on developing foot mechanisms that resist slipping and sinking also in natural terrain. We present first results of multi-segment feet mounted to a bird-inspired robot leg with multi-joint mechanical tendon coupling. Our one- and two-se…
Gait Generation Balancing Joint Load and Mobility for Legged Modular Robots with Easily Detachable Joints
Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka（大阪大学工学系研究生院系统创新部门）；Industrial Cyber-physical Systems Research Center, The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（国家工业科学与技术研究院（AIST）工业网络系统研究中心）
Due to the highly complex environment present during the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, all six funded teams relied on legged robots as part of their robotic team. Their unique locomotion skills of being able to step over obstacles require special considerations for navigation planning. In this work, we present and examine ArtPlanner, the navigation planner used by team CERBERUS during the Finals. It is based on a sampling-based method that determines valid poses with a reachability abstraction and uses learned foothold scores to restrict areas considered safe for stepping. The resulting planni…
University of California Berkeley（加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校）；University of California Riverside（加利福尼亚大学河滨分校）
OpenRoACH is a 15-cm 200-gram self-contained hexapedal robot with an onboard single-board computer. To our knowledge, it is the smallest legged robot with the capability of running the Robot Operating System (ROS) onboard. The robot is fully open sourced, uses accessible materials and off-the-shelf electronic components, can be fabricated with benchtop fast-prototyping machines such as a laser cutter and a 3D printer, and can be assembled by one person within two hours. Its sensory capacity has been tested with gyroscopes, accelerometers, Beacon sensors, color vision sensors, linescan sensors …
Impressive animal locomotion capabilities are mediated by the co-evolution of the skeletal morphology and muscular properties. Legged robot performance would also likely benefit from the co-optimization of actuators and leg morphology. However, development of custom actuators for legged robots is often expensive and time consuming, which discourages roboticists from pursuing performance gains afforded by application-specific actuator optimization. This paper presents open-source designs for two quasi-direct-drive actuators with performance regimes appropriate for an 8--15 kg robot, built compl…
University of Louisiana at Lafayette（路易斯安那大学拉斐特分校）
Legged systems have many advantages when compared to their wheeled counterparts. For example, they can more easily navigate extreme, uneven terrain. However, there are disadvantages as well, particularly the difficulty seen in modeling the nonlinearities of the system. Research has shown that using flexible components within legged locomotive systems improves performance measures such as efficiency and running velocity. Because of the difficulties encountered in modeling flexible systems, control methods such as reinforcement learning can be used to define control strategies. Furthermore, rein…
Dynamically Extensible and Retractable Robotic Leg Linkages for Multi-task Execution in Search and Rescue Scenarios
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校机械与航空航天工程系）；Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校电气与计算机工程系）
Evolutionary Morphology Towards Overconstrained Locomotion via Large-Scale, Multi-Terrain Deep Reinforcement Learning
Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；School of Design（设计学院）；Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering（机械与能源工程系）；Department of System Design and Intelligent Manufacturing（系统设计与智能制造系）
