9 accepted papers
Scientists have long theorized that the cheetah’s tail contributes to its impressive maneuvrability at high speeds by stabilizing its body. This has inspired the design of several agile robots, including Dima - a wheeled platform that used cheetah-inspired inertial tail swings to better execute rapi…
With their combination of power and compliance, pneumatic actuators have great potential for enabling dynamic and agile behaviors in legged robots, but their complex dynam-ics impose control challenges that have hindered widespread use. In this paper, we describe the development of a tractable model…
Collisions between rigid bodies are impulsive events, meaning they create near-instantaneous, finite discontinuities in the velocity state of the dynamic system. If velocity is assumed to be continuous, that requirement may come into conflict with the desire for bodies to not interpenetrate, or with
It has been shown that changing the coordinates describing a multi-body system to use absolute rather than relative angles produces a significant improvement in the tractability of trajectory optimization problems. This simplifies the equations of motion when modelling long kinematic chains. In this…
Many different coordinate formulations have been established to describe the position of multi-body robot models, but the impact of this choice on the tractability of trajectory optimization problems has yet to be investigated. Relative formulations, which reference the position of each link to its
Elaborate trajectory optimization models with many degrees of freedom can be a useful locomotion-planning tool, as they provide rich solutions that take advantage of the robot's specific morphology. They are, however, prone to falling into local minima. Depending on the seed that initializes the sol…
For fast-moving legged robots, the ability to stop rapidly is essential if they are to move safely through unpredictable environments. There is a trade-off between stability and rapidity however, as the forces that slow the robot down also tend to cause a toppling moment. This paper examines how rap…
An actuated spine appears to be a critical component for maneuverability in quadruped animals. However, robotic systems have yet to capitalize on this mechanism. This research compares three different spine morphologies in the planar case, namely the rigid, revolute and prismatic spine. Using a wide…
This paper presents a novel approach to achieving aerial pitch righting in a mobile robot, inspired by the draglines used by jumping spiders. We developed and simulated a mathematical model of the spider during the aerial phase of its jump to gain further insight into the factors affecting the pitch…