Title |
Body-terrain interaction affects large bump traversal of insects and legged robots
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Published in |
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, February 2018
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DOI | 10.1088/1748-3190/aaa2d0 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Sean W Gart, Chen Li |
Abstract |
Small animals and robots must often rapidly traverse large bump-like obstacles when moving through complex 3D terrains, during which, in addition to leg-ground contact, their body inevitably comes into physical contact with the obstacles. However, we know little about the performance limits of large bump traversal and how body-terrain interaction affects traversal. To address these, we challenged the discoid cockroach and an open-loop six-legged robot to dynamically run into a large bump of varying height to discover the maximal traversal performance, and studied how locomotor modes and traversal performance are affected by body-terrain interaction. Remarkably, during rapid running, both the animal and the robot were capable of dynamically traversing a bump much higher than its hip height (up to 4 times the hip height for the animal and 3 times for the robot, respectively) at traversal speeds typical of running, with decreasing traversal probability with increasing bump height. A stability analysis using a novel locomotion energy landscape model explained why traversal was more likely when the animal or robot approached the bump with a low initial body yaw and a high initial body pitch, and why deflection was more likely otherwise. Inspired by these principles, we demonstrated a novel control strategy of active body pitching that increased the robot's maximal traversable bump height by 75%. Our study is a major step in establishing the framework of locomotion energy landscapes to understand locomotion in complex 3D terrains. |
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Country | Count | As % |
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Unknown | 39 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
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Student > Ph. D. Student | 12 | 31% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 4 | 10% |
Researcher | 4 | 10% |
Student > Bachelor | 3 | 8% |
Professor | 3 | 8% |
Other | 6 | 15% |
Unknown | 7 | 18% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
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Computer Science | 2 | 5% |
Physics and Astronomy | 2 | 5% |
Neuroscience | 1 | 3% |
Other | 1 | 3% |
Unknown | 9 | 23% |