Introducing DAGSI Whegs™: The latest generation of Whegs™ robots, featuring a passive-compliant body joint

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 allow its gait to passively adapt when climbing large obstacles or steep inclines. Whegs is similar to the RHex line of robots that preceded Whegs in that the foot motion of all 6 legs is circular, but it differs in many aspects: 3 leg-spokes versus 1, 1 drive motor vs. 6, leg rotation for steering instead of skid steering, passive gait adaptation vs. active gait control, and Whegs has a body joint.

[1]  Roy E. Ritzmann,et al.  Control of obstacle climbing in the cockroach, Blaberus discoidalis. I. Kinematics , 2002, Journal of Comparative Physiology A.

[2]  G.A. Pratt,et al.  Series elastic actuator development for a biomimetic walking robot , 1999, 1999 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (Cat. No.99TH8399).

[3]  Daniel E. Koditschek,et al.  RHex: A Simple and Highly Mobile Hexapod Robot , 2001, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[4]  R.D. Quinn,et al.  Design of an autonomous amphibious robot for surf zone operation: part i mechanical design for multi-mode mobility , 2005, Proceedings, 2005 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics..

[5]  Daniel A. Kingsley,et al.  Improved mobility through abstracted biological principles , 2002, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.