Ascento: A Two-Wheeled Jumping Robot

Abstract

Applications of mobile ground robots demand high speed and agility while navigating in complex indoor environments. These present an ongoing challenge in mobile robotics. A system with these specifications would be of great use for a wide range of indoor inspection tasks. This paper introduces Ascento, a compact wheeled bipedal robot that is able to move quickly on flat terrain, and to overcome obstacles by jumping. The mechanical design and overall architecture of the system is presented, as well as the development of various controllers for different scenarios.

LQR-Assisted Whole-Body Control of a Wheeled Bipedal Robot With Kinematic Loops

“…Impact robustness of balancing control. The images on the top qualitatively show the response to an impact with a m = 2 kg load for the previous LQR-based controller [2] and for the WBC scheme proposed in this work. The two graphs below quantitatively show the corresponding response for the proposed WBC scheme.…”

“…However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, application of WBC to stabilization of wheeled bipedal robots and their inherent non-minimumphase dynamics has not been shown before. 2 In our previous work [2], we modeled the robot as a standard two-wheeled inverted pendulum, thereby completely neglecting leg dynamics. We improve this by rigorously treating the kinematic loops in the legs.…”

CAMI - Analysis, Design and Realization of a Force-Compliant Variable Cam System

“…Four-bar linkages and cam-based systems are nowadays found in various applications e.g. in robots [1] or clockwork mechanisms [2]. In some contexts these mechanisms are also integrated in works of art, as shown by Jean Tinguely's intriguing kinetic machines [3] or Theo Jansen's Strandbeests [4], [5].…”

“…By extending the leg segments to form a parallelogram, the entire actuation can be accomplished from the axis-aligned joints connected to the body. This centralized configuration is used for example in the Ascento robot [1], which has the center of mass close to the main body to reduce the inertia of its legs.…”

Trajectory Optimization for Hybrid Wheeled-Legged Robots in Challenging Terrain

“…However, there are no publications regarding its locomotion framework. The robot Ascento (Klemm et al, 2019) presents a similar behavior focused on navigation in indoor spaces. However, a pre-defined jump motion is triggered by the operator and no trajectory optimization is employed.…”