This paper presents a wheeled wall-climbing robot with the ability to climb concrete, brick walls using circular arrays of miniature spines located around the wheel. The robot consists of two driving wheels and a flex...This paper presents a wheeled wall-climbing robot with the ability to climb concrete, brick walls using circular arrays of miniature spines located around the wheel. The robot consists of two driving wheels and a flexible tail, just like letter “T”, so it is called Tbot. The simple and effective structure of Tbot enables it to be steerable and to transition from horizontal to vertical surfaces rapidly and stably. Inspired by the structure and mechanics of the tarsal chain in the Serica orientalis Motschulsky, a compliant spine mechanism was developed. With the bio-inspired compliant spine mechanism, the climbing performance of Tbot was improved. It could climb on 100° (10° past vertical) brick walls at a speed of 10 cm·s^-1. A mechanical model is also presented to analyze the forces acting on spine during a climbing cycle as well as load share between multi-spines. The simu- lation and experiment results show that the mechanical model is suitable and useful in the optimum design of Tbot.展开更多
The realization of a high-speed running robot is one of the most challenging problems in developing legged robots. The excellent performance of cheetahs provides inspiration for the control and mechanical design of su...The realization of a high-speed running robot is one of the most challenging problems in developing legged robots. The excellent performance of cheetahs provides inspiration for the control and mechanical design of such robots. This paper presents a three-dimensional model of a cheetah that predicts the locomotory behaviors of a running cheetah. Applying biological knowledge of the neural mechanism, we control the muscle flexion and extension during the stance phase, and control the positions of the joints in the flight phase via a PD controller to minimize complexity. The proposed control strategy is shown to achieve similar locomotion of a real cheetah. The simulation realizes good biological properties, such as the leg retraction, ground reaction force, and spring-like leg behavior. The stable bounding results show the promise of the controller in high-speed locomotion. The model can reach 2.7 m-s^-1 as the highest speed, and can accelerate from 0 to 1.5 m-s^-1 in one stride cycle. A mechanical structure based on this simulation is designed to demonstrate the control approach, and the most recently developed hindlimb controlled by the proposed controller is presented in swinging-leg experiments and jump-force experiments.展开更多
This paper presents a novel, legged robot, Abigaille-Ⅲ, which is a hexapod actuated by 24 miniature gear motors. This robot uses dual-layer dry adhesives to climb smooth, vertical surfaces. Because dry adhesives are ...This paper presents a novel, legged robot, Abigaille-Ⅲ, which is a hexapod actuated by 24 miniature gear motors. This robot uses dual-layer dry adhesives to climb smooth, vertical surfaces. Because dry adhesives are passive and stick to various surfaces, they have advantages over mechanisms such as suction, claws and magnets. The mechanical design and posture of Abigaille-Ⅲ were optimized to reduce pitchback forces during vertical climbing. The robot's electronics were designed around a Field Programmable Gate Array, producing a versatile computing architecture. The robot was reconfigured for vertical climbing with both 5 and 6 legs, and with 3 or 4 motors per leg, without changes to the electronic hardware. Abigaille-Ⅲ demonstrated dexterity through vertical climbing on uneven surfaces, and by transferring between horizontal and vertical sur- faces. In endurance tests, Abigaille-Ⅲ completed nearly 4 hours of continuous climbing and over 7 hours of loitering, showing that dry adhesive climbing systems can be used for extended missions.展开更多
In this paper a bio-inspired approach of velocity control for a quadruped robot running with a bounding gait on compliant legs is set up. The dynamic properties ofa sagittal plane model of the robot are investigated. ...In this paper a bio-inspired approach of velocity control for a quadruped robot running with a bounding gait on compliant legs is set up. The dynamic properties ofa sagittal plane model of the robot are investigated. By analyzing the stable fixed points based on Poincare map, we find that the energy change of the system is the main source for forward velocity adjustment. Based on the analysis of the dynamics model of the robot, a new simple linear running controller is proposed using the energy control idea, which requires minimal task level feedback and only controls both the leg torque and ending impact angle. On the other hand, the functions of mammalian vestibular reflexes are discussed, and a reflex map between forward velocity and the pitch movement is built through statistical regression analysis. Finally, a velocity controller based on energy control and vestibular reflexes is built, which has the same structure as the mammalian nervous mechanism for body posture control. The new con- troller allows the robot to run autonomously without any other auxiliary equipment and exhibits good speed adjustment capa- bility. A series simulations and experiments were set to show the good movement agility, and the feasibility and validity of the robot system.展开更多
基金Acknowledgment This work was supported by National Basic Re- search Program of China (No.2011 CB302106), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51005223) and Changzhou Science and Technology Support Pro- gram (CE20120081). The authors would like to thank Dr Xiaojie Wang for his valuable advice and kind help in preparing this manuscript.
文摘This paper presents a wheeled wall-climbing robot with the ability to climb concrete, brick walls using circular arrays of miniature spines located around the wheel. The robot consists of two driving wheels and a flexible tail, just like letter “T”, so it is called Tbot. The simple and effective structure of Tbot enables it to be steerable and to transition from horizontal to vertical surfaces rapidly and stably. Inspired by the structure and mechanics of the tarsal chain in the Serica orientalis Motschulsky, a compliant spine mechanism was developed. With the bio-inspired compliant spine mechanism, the climbing performance of Tbot was improved. It could climb on 100° (10° past vertical) brick walls at a speed of 10 cm·s^-1. A mechanical model is also presented to analyze the forces acting on spine during a climbing cycle as well as load share between multi-spines. The simu- lation and experiment results show that the mechanical model is suitable and useful in the optimum design of Tbot.
基金Acknowledgments This work is supported by the National Hi-tech Research and Development Program of China (863 Program, Grant no. 2011AA0403837002), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61005076, No. 61175107), and the Self-Planned Task (No. SKLRS201006B) of the State Key Laboratory of Ro- botics and System (HIT).
文摘The realization of a high-speed running robot is one of the most challenging problems in developing legged robots. The excellent performance of cheetahs provides inspiration for the control and mechanical design of such robots. This paper presents a three-dimensional model of a cheetah that predicts the locomotory behaviors of a running cheetah. Applying biological knowledge of the neural mechanism, we control the muscle flexion and extension during the stance phase, and control the positions of the joints in the flight phase via a PD controller to minimize complexity. The proposed control strategy is shown to achieve similar locomotion of a real cheetah. The simulation realizes good biological properties, such as the leg retraction, ground reaction force, and spring-like leg behavior. The stable bounding results show the promise of the controller in high-speed locomotion. The model can reach 2.7 m-s^-1 as the highest speed, and can accelerate from 0 to 1.5 m-s^-1 in one stride cycle. A mechanical structure based on this simulation is designed to demonstrate the control approach, and the most recently developed hindlimb controlled by the proposed controller is presented in swinging-leg experiments and jump-force experiments.
文摘This paper presents a novel, legged robot, Abigaille-Ⅲ, which is a hexapod actuated by 24 miniature gear motors. This robot uses dual-layer dry adhesives to climb smooth, vertical surfaces. Because dry adhesives are passive and stick to various surfaces, they have advantages over mechanisms such as suction, claws and magnets. The mechanical design and posture of Abigaille-Ⅲ were optimized to reduce pitchback forces during vertical climbing. The robot's electronics were designed around a Field Programmable Gate Array, producing a versatile computing architecture. The robot was reconfigured for vertical climbing with both 5 and 6 legs, and with 3 or 4 motors per leg, without changes to the electronic hardware. Abigaille-Ⅲ demonstrated dexterity through vertical climbing on uneven surfaces, and by transferring between horizontal and vertical sur- faces. In endurance tests, Abigaille-Ⅲ completed nearly 4 hours of continuous climbing and over 7 hours of loitering, showing that dry adhesive climbing systems can be used for extended missions.
文摘In this paper a bio-inspired approach of velocity control for a quadruped robot running with a bounding gait on compliant legs is set up. The dynamic properties ofa sagittal plane model of the robot are investigated. By analyzing the stable fixed points based on Poincare map, we find that the energy change of the system is the main source for forward velocity adjustment. Based on the analysis of the dynamics model of the robot, a new simple linear running controller is proposed using the energy control idea, which requires minimal task level feedback and only controls both the leg torque and ending impact angle. On the other hand, the functions of mammalian vestibular reflexes are discussed, and a reflex map between forward velocity and the pitch movement is built through statistical regression analysis. Finally, a velocity controller based on energy control and vestibular reflexes is built, which has the same structure as the mammalian nervous mechanism for body posture control. The new con- troller allows the robot to run autonomously without any other auxiliary equipment and exhibits good speed adjustment capa- bility. A series simulations and experiments were set to show the good movement agility, and the feasibility and validity of the robot system.