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SYNOPSIS This paper reviews work performed in the Biorobotics Lab at Case Western Reserve University. Our goal is to use intelligent biological inspiration to develop robots with mobility approaching that of legged animals. We have produced a series of robots that have mobility increasingly more similar to that of cockroach. Some of our other proje...
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Citations
... Hexapod Walking Robots (HWRs) are mechanical vehicles that emulate the locomotion of insects, characterized by their mobility, maneuverability, adaptability, flexibility, and stability in natural terrains. These robots are inspired by the biological features of insects and utilize six legs for walking, enabling them to navigate various terrains with efficiency and versatility [1,2]. In legged locomotion, HWRs are favored by static stability gait due to having three legs in contact with the ground all the time, flexibility where they move, fault tolerant locomotion, possibility to manipulate objects using their legs as arms. ...
Developing an algorithm for ensuring a feasible gait of Hexapod Walking Robots (HWRs) poses the challenge of enabling smooth locomotion on uneven terrain, utilizing the mobility of its six legs that alternately make contact with the ground. To this end, a kinematic-based approach is applied that individually takes into account the movements of each leg, while maintaining compatibility with the body's motion through a non-symmetrical tripod gait. Accordingly, the forward kinematics of the robot is established using the Denavit-Hartenberg parameterization and its inverse kinematics is derived using Paul's method. Then, the uneven terrain is represented by elevation differences in a 3D curve trajectory. After that, an algorithm is proposed to ensure the adaptability of the robot's legs with respect to the terrain's shape, namely, the algorithm allows each leg to follow its own trajectory independently. To validate the proposed approach, 3D simulations are conducted using MATLAB software, demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of the purely kinematic approach. The results show that the algorithm enables the HWR to adapt its walking to irregular terrain in various general cases.
... This reflects the two key problems in navigation: goal approaching and collision avoidance. To solve these two problems, apart from engineering techniques, for instance, the Dijkstra algorithm (Hart, Nilsson, & Raphael, 1972;Soltani, Tawfik, Goulermas, & Fernando, Serres, & Viollet, 2019;Franceschini, 2014;Quinn, Nelson, Bachmann, Kingsley, Offi, & Ritzmann, 2001;Webb, 2020;Wystrach & Graham, 2012). ...
Being one of the most fundamental and crucial capacity of robots and animals, autonomous navigation that consists of goal approaching and collision avoidance enables completion of various tasks while traversing different environments. In light of the impressive navigational abilities of insects despite their tiny brains compared to mammals, the idea of seeking solutions from insects for the two key problems of navigation, i.e., goal approaching and collision avoidance, has fascinated researchers and engineers for many years. However, previous bio-inspired studies have focused on merely one of these two problems at one time. Insect-inspired navigation algorithms that synthetically incorporate both goal approaching and collision avoidance, and studies that investigate the interactions of these two mechanisms in the context of sensory-motor closed-loop autonomous navigation are lacking. To fill this gap, we propose an insect-inspired autonomous navigation algorithm to integrate the goal approaching mechanism as the global working memory inspired by the sweat bee's path integration (PI) mechanism, and the collision avoidance model as the local immediate cue built upon the locust's lobula giant movement detector (LGMD) model. The presented algorithm is utilized to drive agents to complete navigation task in a sensory-motor closed-loop manner within a bounded static or dynamic environment. Simulation results demonstrate that the synthetic algorithm is capable of guiding the agent to complete challenging navigation tasks in a robust and efficient way. This study takes the first tentative step to integrate the insect-like navigation mechanisms with different functionalities (i.e., global goal and local interrupt) into a coordinated control system that future research avenues could build upon.
... He has also built a quadruped robot (SCOUT) which could climb just one stair [4], [5], [6], [7]. Quinn built Leg-Wheel (quadruped and hexapod) robots (Mini-Whegs) that could ascend, descend, and jump stairs [8]. Dalvand designed a wheeled mobile robot that has the capability of climbing stairs, traversing obstacles [9]. ...
... The mobility of animals, especially many insects is often inspiration for robot locomotion. Insects have six legs, which gives them clear stability advantages over four legged animals [3]. The hexapod walker using Raspberry Pi is presented in this paper [4]. ...
... Another type is the hexapod robot with the circle body, which has the legs evenly distributed around the body. Some robots use mechanisms to couple their joints for the purposes of reducing the number of actuators, because actuators are typically heavy and reducing their number can increase robot range [3]. In this paper we propose the hexapod robot construction which has a rectangular body and legs symmetrically distributed into two groups. ...
In order to improve efficiency and achieve higher performance, motor control mechanism on a robotic platform realized by microcontroller-based system last time is changing with the reconfigurable hardware platforms. This paper presents the field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of the hexapod robot navigation using the tripod gate sequence. The servo motor controller is implemented in the Cyclone IV FPGA chip by Altera using Verilog as Hardware Description Language (HDL). The implementation of the servomotor controller in FPGA has several advantages as circuit design flexibility and parallel command executions when compared to the conventional microcontroller-based system. Particular advances introduced in this field have impact on motor control design of multiple-output requirements as well as parallel co-work of multiple robotic platforms in different applications in scope of the Industry 4.0.
... On the one hand, exquisitely-designed legs make it possible to match the corresponding control algorithm to achieve high operating efficiency [17]. On the other hand, most of the leg designs in up-to-date researches are simply of serial structure or of pantograph mechanism [18]. The oversimplified type of legs, to a certain extent, increases difficulty in gait controlling or mechanism protecting. ...
... Decomposition Eqs. (18), (19) require to synthesize GF4, which is listed in Table 8. ...
Walking robots use leg structures to overcome obstacles or move on complicated terrains. Most robots of current researches are equipped with legs of simple structure. The specific design method of walking robot legs is seldom studied. Based on the generalized-function (GF) set theory, a systematic type synthesis process of designing robot legs is introduced. The specific mobility of robot legs is analyzed to obtain two main leg types as the goal of design. Number synthesis problem is decomposed into two stages, actuation and constraint synthesis by name, corresponding to the combinatorics results of linear Diophantine equations. Additional restrictions are discussed to narrow the search range to propose practical limb expressions and kinematic-pair designs. Finally, all the fifty-one leg structures of four subtypes are carried out, some of which are chosen to make up robot prototypes, demonstrating the validity of the method. This paper proposed a novel type synthesis methodology, which could be used to systematically design various practical robot legs and the derived robots.
... Insect robots can access places where human cannot such as hazardous places or small spaces. It has an advantage over wheeled robots in moving over uneven terrain [8] [9]. Wirelessly controlled robots eliminate the need of wiring and they have a longer range, which eliminate the need of people in hazardous places [10]. ...
Insect robots are a special type of robots that designed to imitate the behavior of insects. Insect robots have many advantages such as the ability to move over uneven terrain, less power consumption and smaller in size. This paper shows the progress made during the development of a six-legged robot system inspired by ants and crickets. The resulted robot is able to mimic insects in terms of gait pattern and physical size. The robot is controlled wirelessly by using a Bluetooth xBee module and remote devices including a mobile phone with android application, a personal computer with windows software, and a Bluetooth wireless controller made the Arduino development platform.
... Mini-Whegs™ robots are designed to provide the advantages of legs with minimal leg control requirements [34] [35]. They utilize spoked appendages referred to as wheel-legs [36][37] [38]. Each wheel-leg has multiple feet and rotates at a constant speed while continually bringing legs into stance position. ...
Gecko-inspired structured adhesives will be valuable for novel climbing and space robots. Robots also provide useful evaluation platforms for these adhesives. Climbing robots need to be lightweight, and thus many designs use multiple feet on a single rotating wheel-leg. Generally, such designs have not been able to walk robustly on steeper than vertical substrates. In this work, we use an improved version of our previous Mushroom-Shaped Adhesive MicroStructured (MSAMS) tape to support a power-autonomous robot reliably walking inverted on glass ceilings. The resulting speeds are greater than one body/length per second, faster than other adhesion-based climbing prototypes. The printed robot design is also a contribution toward future robotic designs and will have future applications in testing new adhesives for robotic feet.
... They suggest a thoracic network with nearest-neighbor coupling that maintain approximately balanced inputs to each unit, especially at higher speeds. Our methods may be useful in studying other rhythmic processes, and could assist engineers in designing legged robots that provide stable coordination and gait flexibility (Ferrell, 1995;Beer et al., 1997;Quinn et al., 2001;Holmes et al., 2006;Haynes et al., 2012). RESULTS We use both data-and model-based methods, as described in the Materials and methods. ...
Cockroaches are remarkably stable runners, exhibiting rapid recovery from external perturbations. To uncover the mechanisms behind this important behavioral trait, we recorded leg kinematics of freely running animals in both undisturbed and perturbed trials. Functional coupling underlying inter-leg coordination was monitored before and during localized perturbations, which were applied to single legs via magnetic impulses. The resulting transient effects on all legs and the recovery times to normal pre-perturbation kinematics were studied. We estimated coupling architecture and strength by fitting experimental data to a six-leg-unit phase oscillator model. Using maximum-likelihood techniques, we found that a network with nearest-neighbor inter-leg coupling best fitted the data and that, although coupling strengths vary among preparations, the overall inputs entering each leg are approximately balanced and consistent. Simulations of models with different coupling strengths encountering perturbations suggest that the coupling schemes estimated from our experiments allow animals relatively fast and uniform recoveries from perturbations.
© 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.
... Research in the domain of biologically inspired walking machines has been ongoing for over 10 years. Most of them has been focused on the construction of such machines1234 on a dynamic gait control [5, 6], and on the generation of an advanced locomotion control789, for instance on rough terrain1011121314. In general, these walking machines were solely designed for the purpose of motion without the sensing of environmental stimuli. ...
In this article, a modular neurocontroller is presented. It has the capability to generate a reactive behavior of walking machines. The neurocontroller is formed on the basis of a modular structure. It consists of the three different functionality modules: neural preprocessing, a neural oscillator network and velocity regulating networks. Neural preprocessing is for sensory signal processing. The neural oscillator network, based on a central pattern generator, generates the rhythmic movement for basic locomotion of the walking machines while the velocity regulating networks change the walking directions of the machines with respect to the sensory inputs. As a result, this neurocontroller enables the machines to explore in-and out-door environments by avoiding obstacles and escaping from corners or deadlock situations. It was firstly developed and tested on a physical simulation environment, and then was successfully transferred to the six-legged walking machine AMOS-WD06.
... By this reason the researchers are studying force control strategies based in measurement of these reaction forces. Several advantages could be obtained by this analysis, such as: damping analysis of each walking pattern, energy consumption minimization, real time analysis of impact forces while feet are on the floor, and assessment of optimal force redistribution to obtain better stability and to expand operational capabilities (Preumont et al., 1991;Marhef et al., 1998;Quinn et al., 2001;Bowling, 2007). ...
... At Quinn et al. (2001) a set of strain gauges are attached to the legs of the robotic hexapod structure to study the continuous straight gait. By studying force impact as the feet hit the floor, Bowling (2007) presents a method to analyze the dynamic performance of a hexapod robot. ...
This paper presents the configuration for a bio-inspired walking robot to be used as a development experimental platform in order to validate control architectures. Basing on direct exploitation of the properties of a robots mechanical structure, an approach for achieving force sensing is presented. During the robots (electronic and mechanical) developmental phase, we were able to determinate knots with increases levels of tension and compression, in order to send signals to the strain gauges and to indirectly measure contact forces between the legs and the terrain. This study allowed us to theoretically allocate a group of strain gauges on the optimal positions in the mechanical structure so that they can accomplish the dynamic control of the robot.
