ANYmal - a highly mobile and dynamic quadrupedal robot

Abstract

This paper introduces ANYmal, a quadrupedal robot that features outstanding mobility and dynamic motion capability. Thanks to novel, compliant joint modules with integrated electronics, the 30 kg, 0.5 m tall robotic dog is torque controllable and very robust against impulsive loads during running or jumping. The presented machine was designed with a focus on outdoor suitability, simple maintenance, and user-friendly handling to enable future operation in real world scenarios. Performance tests with the joint actuators indicated a torque control bandwidth of more than 70 Hz, high disturbance rejection capability, as well as impact robustness when moving with maximal velocity. It is demonstrated in a series of experiments that ANYmal can execute walking gaits, dynamically trot at moderate speed, and is able to perform special maneuvers to stand up or crawl very steep stairs. Detailed measurements unveil that even full-speed running requires less than 280 W, resulting in an autonomy of more than 2 h.

Dynamic Locomotion Through Online Nonlinear Motion Optimization for Quadrupedal Robots

“…Our experiments were conducted on ANYmal [12], an accurately torque-controllable quadrupedal robot. Control signals are generated in a 400Hz control loop which runs on the robot's on-board computer (Intel i7-7600U, 2.7 -3.5GHz, dual core 64-bit) together with state estimation [3].…”

“…Over the past few years, ANYmal [12] (see Fig.1) has shown its ability to walk [1], trot [10] and climb over stairs [7]. In our previous work [2], we have advanced the capabilities of ANYmal by demonstrating dynamic lateral walking, pacing and gait transitions between these gaits.…”

Autonomous Mission with a Mobile Manipulator—A Solution to the MBZIRC

“…All joints of the arm are actuated by the same high-performance series elastic actuator (SEA) units. These actuators, called ANYdrives [10], are composed of a brushless high-torque motor, harmonic drive gear, and a torsional spring. The usage of SEAs adds inherent compliance to the system, making it especially suitable for interaction tasks such as valve manipulation.…”

Probabilistic foot contact estimation by fusing information from dynamics and differential/forward kinematics

“…In this section, the contact estimation capability of the proposed method is demonstrated on a quadrupedal robot ANYmal [2]. ANYmal, shown in Fig.…”

“…In case of dynamic robots like StarlETH [1] and its decedent ANYmal [2], adding force sensors at the feet is undesirable due to the following three reasons. First, due to their high speed motions and impacts at the feet, the sensors are likely to be damaged over a repeated use.…”