Energetics of constant height level bounding in quadruped robots

It is a common phenomenon in the movement of the quadruped mammals accompanied with head swings. Inspired by this, this article attempts to add head motion to the bounding gait of a quadruped robot. According to the theoretical analysis, there are two main functions of the head. First, the head can realize the active control of the center of mass position of the robot, which is of great significance to the stable motion of the robot. Second, the swing of the head plays a role in regulating the pitch angle of the torso and improves the coordination and stability of the motion. A simplified quadruped robot model with a head and spine joint is established and analyzed theoretically. The regularity of head movement in periodic bounding gait is summarized. Through simulation and experiment, we confirm the two roles of the head in the bounding gait of a quadruped robot.

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Continuous Static Gait with Twisting Trunk of a Metamorphic Quadruped Robot

Zhang

Dai

2018

Mech. Sci.

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Abstract. The natural quadrupeds, such as geckos and lizards, often twist their trunks when moving. Conventional quadruped robots cannot perform the same motion due to equipping with a trunk which is a rigid body or at most consists of two blocks connected by passive joints. This paper proposes a metamorphic quadruped robot with a reconfigurable trunk which can implement active trunk motions, called MetaRobot I. The robot can imitate the natural quadrupeds to execute motion of trunk twisting. Benefiting from the twisting trunk, the stride length of this quadruped is increased comparing to that of conventional quadruped robots.In this paper a continuous static gait benefited from the twisting trunk performing the increased stride length is introduced. After that, the increased stride length relative to the trunk twisting will be analysed mathematically. Other points impacting the implementation of the increased stride length in the gait are investigated such as the upper limit of the stride length and the kinematic margin. The increased stride length in the gait will lead the increase of locomotion speed comparing with conventional quadruped robots, giving the extent that natural quadrupeds twisting their trunks when moving. The simulation and an experiment on the prototype are then carried out to illustrate the benefits on the stride length and locomotion speed brought by the twisting trunk to the quadruped robot.

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Energetics of constant height level bounding in quadruped robots

Cited by 3 publications

References 26 publications

Control of a 2-D bounding passive quadruped model with Poincaré map approximation and model predictive control

Control of a 2-D bounding passive quadruped model with Poincaré map approximation and model predictive control

The effect of head movement on the bounding gait of a quadruped robot with an active spine

Continuous Static Gait with Twisting Trunk of a Metamorphic Quadruped Robot

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