Fast ground-to-air transition with avian-inspired multifunctional legs

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Shin, Won Dong, Phan, Hoang-Vu, Daley, Monica A., Ijspeert, Auke J., Floreano, Dario
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Shin, Won Dong
Phan, Hoang-Vu
Daley, Monica A.
Ijspeert, Auke J.
Floreano, Dario
author_facet Shin, Won Dong
Phan, Hoang-Vu
Daley, Monica A.
Ijspeert, Auke J.
Floreano, Dario
contents Most birds can navigate seamlessly between aerial and terrestrial environments. Whereas the forelimbs evolved into wings primarily for flight, the hindlimbs serve diverse functions such as walking, hopping, and leaping, and jumping take-off for transitions into flight. These capabilities have inspired engineers to aim for similar multi-modality in aerial robots, expanding their range of applications across diverse environments. However, challenges remain in reproducing multi-modal locomotion, across gaits with distinct kinematics and propulsive characteristics, such as walking and jumping, while preserving lightweight mass for flight. This tradeoff between mechanical complexity and versatility limits most existing aerial robots to only one additional locomotor mode. Here, we overcome the complexity-versatility tradeoff with RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments), which uses its bird-inspired multi-functional legs to jump rapidly into flight, walk on ground and hop over obstacles and gaps similar to the multi-modal locomotion of birds. We show that jumping for take-off contributes substantially to initial flight take-off speed and, remarkably, that it is more energy-efficient than solely propeller-based take-off. Our analysis suggests an important tradeoff in mass distribution between legs and body among birds adapted for different locomotor strategies, with greater investment in leg mass among terrestrial birds with multi-modal gait demands. Multi-functional robot legs expand opportunities to deploy traditional fixed-wing aircraft in complex terrains through autonomous take-offs and multi-modal gaits.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_02389
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fast ground-to-air transition with avian-inspired multifunctional legs
Shin, Won Dong
Phan, Hoang-Vu
Daley, Monica A.
Ijspeert, Auke J.
Floreano, Dario
Robotics
Systems and Control
Most birds can navigate seamlessly between aerial and terrestrial environments. Whereas the forelimbs evolved into wings primarily for flight, the hindlimbs serve diverse functions such as walking, hopping, and leaping, and jumping take-off for transitions into flight. These capabilities have inspired engineers to aim for similar multi-modality in aerial robots, expanding their range of applications across diverse environments. However, challenges remain in reproducing multi-modal locomotion, across gaits with distinct kinematics and propulsive characteristics, such as walking and jumping, while preserving lightweight mass for flight. This tradeoff between mechanical complexity and versatility limits most existing aerial robots to only one additional locomotor mode. Here, we overcome the complexity-versatility tradeoff with RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments), which uses its bird-inspired multi-functional legs to jump rapidly into flight, walk on ground and hop over obstacles and gaps similar to the multi-modal locomotion of birds. We show that jumping for take-off contributes substantially to initial flight take-off speed and, remarkably, that it is more energy-efficient than solely propeller-based take-off. Our analysis suggests an important tradeoff in mass distribution between legs and body among birds adapted for different locomotor strategies, with greater investment in leg mass among terrestrial birds with multi-modal gait demands. Multi-functional robot legs expand opportunities to deploy traditional fixed-wing aircraft in complex terrains through autonomous take-offs and multi-modal gaits.
title Fast ground-to-air transition with avian-inspired multifunctional legs
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.02389