Addition of a peristaltic wave improves multi-legged locomotion performance on complex terrains
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2024
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| _version_ | 1866929523665141760 |
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| author | Iaschi, Massimiliano Chong, Baxi Wang, Tianyu Lin, Jianfeng He, Juntao Soto, Daniel Xu, Zhaochen Goldman, Daniel I |
| author_facet | Iaschi, Massimiliano Chong, Baxi Wang, Tianyu Lin, Jianfeng He, Juntao Soto, Daniel Xu, Zhaochen Goldman, Daniel I |
| contents | Characterized by their elongate bodies and relatively simple legs, multi-legged robots have the potential to locomote through complex terrains for applications such as search-and-rescue and terrain inspection. Prior work has developed effective and reliable locomotion strategies for multi-legged robots by propagating the two waves of lateral body undulation and leg stepping, which we will refer to as the two-wave template. However, these robots have limited capability to climb over obstacles with sizes comparable to their heights. We hypothesize that such limitations stem from the two-wave template that we used to prescribe the multi-legged locomotion. Seeking effective alternative waves for obstacle-climbing, we designed a five-segment robot with static (non-actuated) legs, where each cable-driven joint has a rotational degree-of-freedom (DoF) in the sagittal plane (vertical wave) and a linear DoF (peristaltic wave). We tested robot locomotion performance on a flat terrain and a rugose terrain. While the benefit of peristalsis on flat-ground locomotion is marginal, the inclusion of a peristaltic wave substantially improves the locomotion performance in rugose terrains: it not only enables obstacle-climbing capabilities with obstacles having a similar height as the robot, but it also significantly improves the traversing capabilities of the robot in such terrains. Our results demonstrate an alternative actuation mechanism for multi-legged robots, paving the way towards all-terrain multi-legged robots. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_01046 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Addition of a peristaltic wave improves multi-legged locomotion performance on complex terrains Iaschi, Massimiliano Chong, Baxi Wang, Tianyu Lin, Jianfeng He, Juntao Soto, Daniel Xu, Zhaochen Goldman, Daniel I Robotics Characterized by their elongate bodies and relatively simple legs, multi-legged robots have the potential to locomote through complex terrains for applications such as search-and-rescue and terrain inspection. Prior work has developed effective and reliable locomotion strategies for multi-legged robots by propagating the two waves of lateral body undulation and leg stepping, which we will refer to as the two-wave template. However, these robots have limited capability to climb over obstacles with sizes comparable to their heights. We hypothesize that such limitations stem from the two-wave template that we used to prescribe the multi-legged locomotion. Seeking effective alternative waves for obstacle-climbing, we designed a five-segment robot with static (non-actuated) legs, where each cable-driven joint has a rotational degree-of-freedom (DoF) in the sagittal plane (vertical wave) and a linear DoF (peristaltic wave). We tested robot locomotion performance on a flat terrain and a rugose terrain. While the benefit of peristalsis on flat-ground locomotion is marginal, the inclusion of a peristaltic wave substantially improves the locomotion performance in rugose terrains: it not only enables obstacle-climbing capabilities with obstacles having a similar height as the robot, but it also significantly improves the traversing capabilities of the robot in such terrains. Our results demonstrate an alternative actuation mechanism for multi-legged robots, paving the way towards all-terrain multi-legged robots. |
| title | Addition of a peristaltic wave improves multi-legged locomotion performance on complex terrains |
| topic | Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01046 |