Comparing trotting and turning strategies on the quadrupedal oncilla robot

In this paper, we compare three different trotting techniques and five different turning strategies on a small, compliant, biologically inspired quadrupedal robot, the Oncilla. The locomotion techniques were optimized on the actual hardware using a treadmill setup, without relying on models. We found that using half ellipses as foot trajectories resulted in the fastest gaits, as well as the highest robustness against parameter changes. Furthermore, we analyzed the importance of using the scapulae for turning, from which we observed that although not necessary, they are needed for turning with a higher speed.

[1]  Rico Möckel,et al.  Oncilla robot: a light-weight bio-inspired quadruped robot for fast locomotion in rough terrain , 2011 .

[2]  D. Weary,et al.  Hoof pathologies influence kinematic measures of dairy cow gait. , 2005, Journal of dairy science.

[3]  Roland Siegwart,et al.  Starleth: A compliant quadrupedal robot for fast, efficient, and versatile locomotion , 2012 .

[4]  Martin Buehler,et al.  Dynamic compliant quadruped walking , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[5]  Fumiya Iida,et al.  "Cheap" Rapid Locomotion of a Quadruped Robot: Self-Stabilization of Bounding Gait , 2004 .

[6]  Ferdinando Cannella,et al.  Design of HyQ – a hydraulically and electrically actuated quadruped robot , 2011 .

[7]  Riccardo Poli,et al.  Particle swarm optimization , 1995, Swarm Intelligence.

[8]  Yoav Benjamini,et al.  Coordination of steering in a free-trotting quadruped , 2007, Journal of Comparative Physiology A.

[9]  James Kennedy,et al.  Particle swarm optimization , 2002, Proceedings of ICNN'95 - International Conference on Neural Networks.

[10]  R. Poppele,et al.  Kinematic analysis of cat hindlimb stepping. , 1995, Journal of neurophysiology.

[11]  Alfred A. Rizzi,et al.  Series compliance for an efficient running gait , 2008, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

[12]  Xin Wang,et al.  Running and turning control of a quadruped robot with compliant legs in bounding gait , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[13]  Kevin Blankespoor,et al.  BigDog, the Rough-Terrain Quadruped Robot , 2008 .

[14]  Auke Jan Ijspeert,et al.  Towards dynamic trot gait locomotion: Design, control, and experiments with Cheetah-cub, a compliant quadruped robot , 2013, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[15]  Huosheng Hu,et al.  Parameter optimisation of an evolutionary algorithm for on-line gait generation of quadruped robots , 2003, IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, 2003.

[16]  R. M. Walter.  Kinematics of 90° running turns in wild mice , 2003, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[17]  Benjamin Schrauwen,et al.  Realization of a passive compliant robot dog , 2010, 2010 3rd IEEE RAS & EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics.

[18]  Yue Shi,et al.  A modified particle swarm optimizer , 1998, 1998 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation Proceedings. IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (Cat. No.98TH8360).

[19]  Stefan Schaal,et al.  Compliant quadruped locomotion over rough terrain , 2009, 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[20]  J. Estremera,et al.  Quadrupedal Locomotion: An Introduction to the Control of Four-legged Robots , 2006 .

[21]  M. E. H. Pedersen.  Good Parameters for Particle Swarm Optimization , 2010 .