Abstract
We have developed a biologically inspired reconfigurable quadruped robot which can perform walking and rolling locomotion and transform between walking and rolling by reconfiguring its legs. This paper presents an approach to control rolling locomotion with the biologically inspired quadruped robot. For controlling rolling locomotion, a controller which can compensate robot’s energy loss during rolling locomotion is designed based on a dynamic model of the quadruped robot. The dynamic model describes planar rolling locomotion based on an assumption that the quadruped robot does not fall down while rolling and the influences of collision and contact with the ground, and it is applied for computing the mechanical energy and a plant in a numerical simulation. The numerical simulation of rolling locomotion on the flat ground verifies the effectiveness of the proposed controller. The simulation results show that the quadruped robot can perform periodic rolling locomotion with the proposed energy-based controller. In conclusion, it is shown that the proposed control approach is effective in achieving the periodic rolling locomotion on the flat ground.
Highlights
Reconfigurable robots have the capability to adapt to different tasks and environments
We focus on robot’s energy during rolling locomotion, though previous studies of rolling locomotion on reconfigurable robots [8, 11, 20, 21] have focused on the movement of robot’s center of gravity (COG)
We show that the quadruped Journal of Robotics (a) robot performs periodic rolling locomotion with energybased control
Summary
Reconfigurable robots have the capability to adapt to different tasks and environments. Reconfigurable robots inspired by a creature performing walking and rolling locomotion provide the capability to attain the fast and energy-efficient movement on the flat ground with rolling locomotion and high stability and mobility on the uneven ground with walking locomotion. The quadruped robot loses some of robot’s energy due to collision and contact with the ground while rolling, and it cannot perform periodic rolling locomotion without energy supply It requires energy compensation, which is provided by applying control methods based on object’s energy discussed in literatures [22,23,24,25,26]. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through a numerical simulation of its rolling locomotion
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