Abstract
Self-organization of locomotion characterizes the feature of automatically spontaneous gait generation without preprogrammed limb movement coordination. To study this feature in quadruped locomotion, we propose here a new open-source, small-sized reconfigurable quadruped robot, called Lilibot, with multiple sensory feedback and its physical simulation. Lilibot was designed as a friendly quadrupedal platform with unique characteristics, including light weight, easy handling, modular components, and multiple real-time sensory feedback. Its modular components can be flexibly reconfigured to obtain features, such as different leg orientations for testing the effectiveness and generalization of self-organized locomotion control. Its multiple sensory feedback (i.e., joint angles, joint velocities, joint currents, joint voltages, and body inclination) can support vestibular reflexes and compliant control mechanisms for body posture stabilization and compliant behavior, respectively. To evaluate the performance of Lilibot, we implemented our developed adaptive neural controller on it. The experimental results demonstrated that Lilibot can autonomously and rapidly exhibit adaptive and versatile behaviors, including spontaneous self-organized locomotion (i.e., adaptive locomotion) under different leg orientations, body posture stabilization on a tiltable plane, and leg compliance for unexpected external load compensation. To this end, we successfully developed an open-source, friendly, small-sized, and lightweight quadruped robot with reconfigurable legs and multiple sensory feedback that can serve as a generic quadrupedal platform for research and education in the fields of locomotion, vestibular reflex-based, and compliant control.
Highlights
The motor behaviors of animals are characterized by numerous features (Dickinson et al, 2000)
The final step was to optimize the mechanics of Lilibot iteratively through physical simulation controlled by specific algorithms in the virtual robot experimentation platform (V-REP) (Rohmer et al, 2013)
The experiments consisted of: (1) self-organized locomotion under different leg orientations, driven by the decoupled central pattern generators (CPGs) control, (2) leg compliance to compensate for an unexpected external load, driven by the compliant control, (3) body stabilization on a tiltable plane, driven by the vestibular reflex control, and (4) body stabilization and payload compensation on a tiltable plane, driven by the combination of the vestibular reflex and compliant controls
Summary
The motor behaviors of animals are characterized by numerous features (Dickinson et al, 2000). Several of these basic features, such as self-organization, vestibular reflexes, and compliance, play fundamental roles in achieving adaptive and versatile locomotion behaviors. Understanding the biological principles of these properties contributes to revealing the underlying mechanisms of adaptive locomotion generation (Taga et al, 1991), and the subsequent development of advanced artificial legged robots (Hutter et al, 2017). Quadruped robots can serve as useful research tools for studying and validating the mechanisms or hypotheses of the various features of legged locomotion (Ijspeert, 2014; Karakasiliotis et al, 2016)
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