Informed Repurposing of Quadruped Legs for New Tasks

Abstract

Redesigning and remanufacturing robots are infeasible for resource-constrained environments like space or undersea. This work thus studies how to evaluate and repurpose existing, complementary, quadruped legs for new tasks. We implement this approach on 15 robot designs generated from combining six pre-selected leg designs. The performance maps for force-based locomotion tasks like pulling, pushing, and carrying objects are constructed via a learned policy that works across all designs and adapts to the limits of each. Performance predictions agree well with real-world validation results. The robot can locomote at 0.5 body lengths per second while exerting a force that is almost 60% of its weight.