发表机构
Case Western Reserve University（凯斯西储大学）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。AI 中文总结
本文提出信息论度量来量化腿式机器人的机械智能，通过分析身体动力学作为计算与通信过程，考察柔顺驱动与低齿轮比传动的权衡，并在仿真中验证，为具身计算研究奠定基础。
AI 中文摘要
机械智能，宽泛地定义为机器人物理形态所减少的控制负担，已成为机器人学中的一个重要概念，并在仿生机器人、软体机器人、机器人群体以及许多其他领域中得到体现。然而，对机械智能的严格理论理解和定量度量，却落后于社区所开发的工程系统。在本工作中，我们以现代腿式机器人作为基准和范例，提出了若干用于量化机械智能的信息论度量。通过将身体动力学视为一个计算过程和一个通信信道，我们展示了腿式机器人工程中的若干先前见解可以用信息论来描述，并量化了比特如何被机械模态以及跨机器人坐标处理。具体而言，我们考察了通过串联弹性驱动显式引入柔顺性与使用所谓的本体感觉、低齿轮比传动之间的权衡，并探讨了这些机制在运动过程中如何与控制策略相互作用。我们在复杂度递增的系统上发展了这些结果：一个简化的机器人腿部传动线性模型、一个非线性单腿仿真，以及由学习策略控制并在挑战性地形中导航的仿真四足机器人。这些结果为更广泛地研究机器人机制及其在具身计算中的作用奠定了基础。
英文摘要
Mechanical intelligence, loosely defined as the reduction in control burden afforded by a robot's physical form, has become a prominent concept in robotics, with instantiations in bioinspired robotics, soft robotics, robotic swarms, and many other areas. However, rigorous theoretical understanding and quantitative measures of mechanical intelligence have lagged behind the engineering systems that the community has developed. In this work, using modern legged robots as a benchmark and exemplar, we propose several information-theoretic metrics for quantifying mechanical intelligence. By viewing body dynamics as both a computational process and a communication channel, we show that several prior insights in legged-robot engineering can be described using information theory, and we quantify how bits are processed by mechanical modes and across robot coordinates. Specifically, we examine the trade-off between explicitly incorporating compliance through series-elastic actuation and using so-called proprioceptive, low-gear-ratio transmissions, and we explore how these mechanisms interact with control policies during locomotion. We develop these results on systems of increasing complexity: a simplified linear model of a robot-leg transmission, a nonlinear single-leg simulation, and simulated quadruped robots controlled by a learned policy while navigating challenging terrain. These results lay the groundwork for broader study of robot mechanisms and their role in embodied computation.
Comments8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, submitted to IEEE ICRA 2027 for publication
