Framework for Developing Bio-Inspired Morphologies for Walking Robots

Billeschou, Peter; Bijma, Nienke N.; Larsen, Leon Bonde; Gorb, Stanislav N.; Larsen, Jørgen Christian; Manoonpong, Poramate

doi:10.3390/app10196986

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…One way effective friction can be reduced is if the object can be rolled. The dung beetle robot can use two front legs to walk backward on different terrains while using the middle and hind legs to stabilize and manipulate a large ball (Leung et al, 2018;Thor et al, 2018;Billeschou et al, 2020). Although only validated in simulation, an interesting example is the dual MPC-based approach described in Yang C. et al (2020b), where a quadruped robot stands on top of a large ball and rolls it to transport itself and the ball.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Legged robots for object manipulation: A review

et al. 2023

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Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments, many legged platform demonstrations have also included “moving an object” as a way of doing tangible work. Legged robots can be designed to manipulate a particular type of object (e.g., a cardboard box, a soccer ball, or a larger piece of furniture), by themselves or collaboratively. The objective of this review is to collect and learn from these examples, to both organize the work done so far in the community and highlight interesting open avenues for future work. This review categorizes existing works into four main manipulation methods: object interactions without grasping, manipulation with walking legs, dedicated non-locomotive arms, and legged teams. Each method has different design and autonomy features, which are illustrated by available examples in the literature. Based on a few simplifying assumptions, we further provide quantitative comparisons for the range of possible relative sizes of the manipulated object with respect to the robot. Taken together, these examples suggest new directions for research in legged robot manipulation, such as multifunctional limbs, terrain modeling, or learning-based control, to support a number of new deployments in challenging indoor/outdoor scenarios in warehouses/construction sites, preserved natural areas, and especially for home robotics.

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Legged robots for object manipulation: A review

et al. 2023

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“…This content is not subject to CC BY 4.0. The schematic robot was redrawn after [ 294 ] (© 2020 Billeschou et al, published by MDPI, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).…”

Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical constraints lead to parallel evolution of micro- and nanostructures of animal adhesive pads: a review

Büscher¹,

Gorb²

2021

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol.

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Adhesive pads are functional systems with specific micro- and nanostructures which evolved as a response to specific environmental conditions and therefore exhibit convergent traits. The functional constraints that shape systems for the attachment to a surface are general requirements. Different strategies to solve similar problems often follow similar physical principles, hence, the morphology of attachment devices is affected by physical constraints. This resulted in two main types of attachment devices in animals: hairy and smooth. They differ in morphology and ultrastructure but achieve mechanical adaptation to substrates with different roughness and maximise the actual contact area with them. Species-specific environmental surface conditions resulted in different solutions for the specific ecological surroundings of different animals. As the conditions are similar in discrete environments unrelated to the group of animals, the micro- and nanostructural adaptations of the attachment systems of different animal groups reveal similar mechanisms. Consequently, similar attachment organs evolved in a convergent manner and different attachment solutions can occur within closely related lineages. In this review, we present a summary of the literature on structural and functional principles of attachment pads with a special focus on insects, describe micro- and nanostructures, surface patterns, origin of different pads and their evolution, discuss the material properties (elasticity, viscoelasticity, adhesion, friction) and basic physical forces contributing to adhesion, show the influence of different factors, such as substrate roughness and pad stiffness, on contact forces, and review the chemical composition of pad fluids, which is an important component of an adhesive function. Attachment systems are omnipresent in animals. We show parallel evolution of attachment structures on micro- and nanoscales at different phylogenetic levels, focus on insects as the largest animal group on earth, and subsequently zoom into the attachment pads of the stick and leaf insects (Phasmatodea) to explore convergent evolution of attachment pads at even smaller scales. Since convergent events might be potentially interesting for engineers as a kind of optimal solution by nature, the biomimetic implications of the discussed results are briefly presented.

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“…The incorporation of sensory feedback into CPGs has also been investigated, but this often requires extensive engineering. Thus, such methods have been developed for controlled scenarios including salamander-inspired Pleurobot [15], quadruped robots [19], worm-like robots [20], stick-insect robots [21], and dung beetle-like robot [22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

DeepCPG Policies for Robot Locomotion

Deshpande

Hurd

Minai

et al. 2023

IEEE Trans. Cogn. Dev. Syst.

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Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) form the neural basis of the observed rhythmic behaviors for locomotion in legged animals. The CPG dynamics organized into networks allow the emergence of complex locomotor behaviors. In this work, we take this inspiration for developing walking behaviors in multi-legged robots. We present novel DeepCPG policies that embed CPGs as a layer in a larger neural network and facilitate end-to-end learning of locomotion behaviors in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) setup. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on physics engine-based insectoid robots. We show that, compared to traditional approaches, DeepCPG policies allow sample-efficient end-to-end learning of effective locomotion strategies even in the case of high-dimensional sensor spaces (vision). We scale the DeepCPG policies using a modular robot configuration and multiagent DRL. Our results suggest that gradual complexification with embedded priors of these policies in a modular fashion could achieve non-trivial sensor and motor integration on a robot platform. These results also indicate the efficacy of bootstrapping more complex intelligent systems from simpler ones based on biological principles. Finally, we present the experimental results for a proof-of-concept insectoid robot system for which DeepCPG learned policies initially using the simulation engine and these were afterwards transferred to real-world robots without any additional fine-tuning.

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Framework for Developing Bio-Inspired Morphologies for Walking Robots

Cited by 13 publications

References 34 publications

Legged robots for object manipulation: A review

Legged robots for object manipulation: A review

Physical constraints lead to parallel evolution of micro- and nanostructures of animal adhesive pads: a review

DeepCPG Policies for Robot Locomotion

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