Feasibility study of a novel robotic system BALLU: Buoyancy assisted lightweight legged unit

Ghassemi, Sepehr; Hong, Dennis

doi:10.1109/humanoids.2016.7803268

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…In (51), a four-wheeled ground robot with two tiltable propellers demonstrated ground locomotion and wall climbing as well as the transitioning between the two. An interesting concept of a lighter-than-air flying robot with legs was proposed with the goal of improving bipedal walking stability using a helium-filled balloon, but its buoyancy was not sufficient for flying, and the robot was susceptible to wind (52).…”

Section: Multimodal Locomotion and Hybrid Terrestrial And Aerial Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A bipedal walking robot that can fly, slackline, and skateboard

et al. 2021

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Section: Multimodal Locomotion and Hybrid Terrestrial And Aerial Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A bipedal walking robot that can fly, slackline, and skateboard

et al. 2021

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“…WiFi and Bluetooth) capabilities. These updates are a distinct difference from the previous version ( Ghassemi and Hong, 2016 ), which was limited to teleoperation via radio controllers, and allows BALLU2 to walk based on algorithms.…”

Section: System Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On a more extreme note, the feasibility of a combination of propellers, buoyancy force, and active rappelling to lift rigid bodies has also been studied by Lin et al (2019). Ghassemi and Hong (2016) introduced the first iteration of BALLU to verify the concept of buoyancy assisted legged robot, but it was limited to teleoperation using radio control signals. In this paper, the next iteration, BALLU2, which is the first implementation that can walk by algorithms, is presented with details on its design and controller.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the concept of BALLU was first unveiled by Ghassemi and Hong (2016) , there have been further studies of robot platforms adopting helium balloons and leveraging their buoyancy force. One noticeable work is the Giacometti Arm designed by Takeichi et al (2017) , a 20-m helium balloon supported robot arm designed for inspection tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Ghassemi and Hong (2016) introduced the first iteration of BALLU to verify the concept of buoyancy assisted legged robot, but it was limited to teleoperation using radio control signals. In this paper, the next iteration, BALLU2, which is the first implementation that can walk by algorithms, is presented with details on its design and controller.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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BALLU2: A Safe and Affordable Buoyancy Assisted Biped

et al. 2021

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This work presents the first full disclosure of BALLU, Buoyancy Assisted Lightweight Legged Unit, and describes the advantages and challenges of its concept, the hardware design of a new implementation (BALLU2), a motion analysis, and a data-driven walking controller. BALLU is a robot that never falls down due to the buoyancy provided by a set of helium balloons attached to the lightweight body, which solves many issues that hinder current robots from operating close to humans. The advantages gained also lead to the platform’s distinct difficulties caused by severe nonlinearities and external forces such as buoyancy and drag. The paper describes the nonconventional characteristics of BALLU as a legged robot and then gives an analysis of its unique behavior. Based on the analysis, a data-driven approach is proposed to achieve non-teleoperated walking: a statistical process using Spearman Correlation Coefficient is proposed to form low-dimensional state vectors from the simulation data, and an artificial neural network-based controller is trained on the same data. The controller is tested both on simulation and on real-world hardware. Its performance is assessed by observing the robot’s limit cycles and trajectories in the Cartesian coordinate. The controller generates periodic walking sequences in simulation as well as on the real-world robot even without additional transfer learning. It is also shown that the controller can deal with unseen conditions during the training phase. The resulting behavior not only shows the robustness of the controller but also implies that the proposed statistical process effectively extracts a state vector that is low-dimensional yet contains the essential information of the high-dimensional dynamics of BALLU’s walking.

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Cable-Driven Robot to Simulate the Buoyancy Force for Improving the Performance of Underwater Robots

Rodriguez-Barroso

Saltarén

2021

Mechanisms and Machine Science

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Feasibility study of a novel robotic system BALLU: Buoyancy assisted lightweight legged unit

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

A bipedal walking robot that can fly, slackline, and skateboard

A bipedal walking robot that can fly, slackline, and skateboard

BALLU2: A Safe and Affordable Buoyancy Assisted Biped

Cable-Driven Robot to Simulate the Buoyancy Force for Improving the Performance of Underwater Robots

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