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MechaRoach II is a hexapod robot under development that will walk on horizontal surfaces, climb on inclined or vertical mesh surfaces, and test strategies for transitioning between the two. The locomotion principles that allow cockroaches to make these transitions have been studied and mechanisms using abstractions of those principles have been developed for the robot. These principles include leg...
This paper describes the vision-based obstacle detection system of the CWRU Cutter, an Autonomous Lawnmower developed for the annual ??Institute of Navigation (ION) Autonomous Lawnmower Competition.?? Unlike LIDAR sensors commonly found on autonomous vehicles, computer vision systems can provide similar information at drastically reduced prices. Though significantly more cost-effective than LIDAR,...
A hexapod designed for wall climbing with a body joint and six 3-DOF legs can perform complex maneuvers such as sharp turns, making both interior and exterior transitions between vertical and horizontal surfaces, and traversing obstacles on both surfaces. This paper presents work toward the design and construction of the hexapod DIGbot, named for its utilization of distributed inward gripping (DIG)...
For decades, insects have been a valuable source of inspiration for mechanical and control designs of legged robots. Anatomical and behavioral studies of insects such as cockroaches, stick insects and locusts have inspired the development of many robots. However, their control systems had to be engineered based upon behavioral studies and control hypotheses rather than neurobiology. Recent insect...
Successful long-term settlements on the Moon will need a supply of resources such as oxygen and water, yet the process of regularly transporting these resources from Earth would be prohibitively costly and dangerous. One alternative would be an approach using heterogeneous, autonomous robotic teams, which could collect and extract these resources from the surrounding environment (in-situ resource utilization...
Design modifications have improved the durability and performance of a previously developed hybrid vehicle capable of both aerial and terrestrial locomotion. Whereas the original vehicle could fly, land, and crawl in sequence, it suffered from limited durability, as evidenced by catastrophic failure after a small number of landings - two to four depending on the substrate. The two most common failure...
This paper presents a biologically inspired approach to simulation design for a walking hexapod robot with focus on the parameter selection of critical values (e.g. joint stiffness) for robot performance. The fundamental aim is to mimic key aspects within a dynamic simulation environment to develop a clearer picture of the tradeoffs that biological systems naturally regulate. Although the importance...
Surf zone environments pose extreme challenges to robot operation. A robot that could autonomously navigate through the rocky terrain, constantly changing underwater currents, hard-packed moist sand, and loose dry sand characterizing this environment, would have very significant utility for a range of defence and civilian missions. The study of animal locomotion mechanisms can elucidate specific movement...
We report the successful design and fabrication of an autonomous robot, dubbed the CASE/NPS Beach Whegstrade robot, capable of navigating the challenging terrain of the non-submersed surf-zone region based on abstracted biological inspiration. Abstracted biological inspiration attempts to distill salient biological principles and implement them using presently available technologies; its efficacy...
Insights from biology have helped reduce the weight and increase the climbing ability of mobile robots. This paper presents Screenbot, see Fig. 1, a new 126 gram biologically-inspired robot that scales wire mesh substrates using spines. Like insects, it walks with an alternating tripod gait and maintains tension in opposing legs to keep the feet attached to the substrate. A single motor drives all...
Simulation of robots in a virtual domain has multiple benefits, including serving as a training tool for end users and serving as a tool for robot testing and development. USARSim (Unified System for Automation and Robot Simulation) is a simulation tool that is being used to accomplish these goals. It is based on the Unreal Tournament 2004 gaming engine, which approximates the physics of how a robot...
Current autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic platforms are limited to functioning in highly structured environments such as buildings and roads. Autonomous robots that could explore and navigate rugged terrain and highly unstructured environments such as collapsed buildings would have large dividends in civilian and military applications. In this work, we present the next generation of Whegstrade...
Insects and geckos use claws and adhesive pads to negotiate both rough and smooth surfaces. Climbing robots have been designed to mimic various aspects of these and other biological systems to operate in specific vertical environments. Robots that adhere to the surface through suction cups, magnetic end-effectors, or adhesive pads can climb featureless, flat, or smoothly curved surfaces. Vortex-generating...
DAGSI Whegs is the latest generation of full size Whegs robots. The robot is designed for collaborative work with the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in SLAM with active feature recognition. Whegs vehicles use abstracted biological principles to navigate over irregular and varied terrain with little or no low level control. Torsionally compliant devices in the drive train of each wheel-leg...
For almost two decades, Holk Cruse's leg coordination method has been used as a control basis for generating gaits in legged robots. His stick insect inspired method has been successfully implemented for a number of robots such as Robot I and Robot II, the TUM Walking Machine, Tarry II, and BILL-Ant-p. However, some engineers have had difficulties implementing the controller when trying to select...
Several recently-designed robots are able to scale steep surfaces using animal-inspired strategies for foot attachment and leg kinematics. These designs could be valuable for reaching high vantage points or for overcoming large obstacles. However, most of these robots cannot transition between intersecting surfaces. For example, our previous Climbing Mini-WhegsTM robot cannot make a 90deg transition...
We previously presented a remote-controlled robot, Climbing Mini-Whegstrade, which scales vertical glass walls using passive compliant feet on simple rotating wheel-legs [1]. With a single drive motor, the legs of the robot press the feet against the glass, then gradually peel them away, mimicking the foot motions observed in insects. With feet made of scotch tape, the robot was able to walk on glass...
Current Mars exploration and science is limited to orbiters and areas close to original rover landing sites. Most of the places of geological interest lay many kilometers outside of suitable landing sites. In-situ resources such as wind can enable rovers to travel great distances on Mars while using little internal power. In this paper, a dynamic model of an individual wind driven rover is used to...
An approach to odor source localization with an aerial vehicle using the fusion of odor sensors, visual sensors, and airspeed sensors is presented. The motion of the tracking vehicle is decomposed into two components - a component normal to the wind direction and a component tangential to the wind direction. The tangential component is controlled with a strategy that moves upwind when odor is detected...
Mini-Whegstrade, a power-autonomous vehicle that uses multi-spoke wheel-legs for locomotion, is able to climb vertical glass surfaces with several different wheel-leg designs. Adhesion to the glass is achieved using pressure sensitive adhesives. In this paper, high-speed video is used to compare the performance and contact area during steps of five passive foot designs. The contact area, when normalized...
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