Method to seek the deformed shape and to find the rolling direction of tensegrity robots

Abstract

Tensegrity structures which are widely used on architecture have high strength-mass ratio, strong deformation ability and pressure and shock resistance ability, so they can be used in design of deformable tensegrity robots which can adapt to complex and dangerous terrestrial environment. The deformable robots use different gaits to adapt to different terrestrial environment. The rolling gait of the deformable robots is efficient and stable on the flat ground. This paper proposes a method to predict rolling direction of the deformable robots to avoid the limitation of the exhaustive experimental method. The method uses the finite element analysis to get deformational shape of the robots, and analyze torque of struts during this state to predict rolling direction of the robots. The experiment on a real model has been performed to check validity of the method.