Design of a tumbling robot that jumps and tumbles for rough terrain

In obstacle-dense environments and uneven terrain, tumbling and jumping are efficient modes of locomotion for small robots. A miniature robot with hybrid motion patterns of tumbling and jumping for these environments and terrain is presented in this paper. The robot is 15cm long, 12cm wide, 4cm high, and 260g in weight with two 10cm long arms. The jumping energy is stored by using a reduction gearbox-cable mechanism to compress four torsion springs and stretch two tension springs. The robot jumps when the stored energy is released by an incomplete gear of the gearbox. The tumbling mechanism is symmetric with respect to the left and right of the body. With the tumbling mechanism, the robot can easily adjust its take-off angle when jumping. The jumping and tumbling mechanism are analyzed. Detailed implementation and experimental results are also given in this paper. The proposed robot can jump more than 53 cm high at a take-off angle of 80.54° and walk forward at a speed of 7.27cm/s.

[1]  Li Xiao,et al.  Design and testing of a controllable miniature jumping robot , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[2]  Paolo Fiorini,et al.  Minimalist Jumping Robots for Celestial Exploration , 2003, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[3]  Dario Floreano,et al.  A miniature 7g jumping robot , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[4]  Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos,et al.  The adelopod tumbling robot , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos,et al.  Aquapod: A small amphibious robot with sampling capabilities , 2012, 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[6]  Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos,et al.  Robotic tumbling locomotion , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Dario Floreano,et al.  Steerable miniature jumping robot , 2010, Auton. Robots.

[8]  Paolo Dario,et al.  Design and Development of the Long-Jumping "Grillo" Mini Robot , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[9]  Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos,et al.  Aquapod: Prototype design of an amphibious tumbling robot , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  R. Quinn,et al.  Insect Designs for Improved Robot Mobility , 2001 .

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

[12]  Li Xiao,et al.  Development of a miniature self-stabilization jumping robot , 2009, 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[13]  Roger D. Quinn,et al.  A Small, Insect-Inspired Robot that Runs and Jumps , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[14]  Guangming Song,et al.  A reconfigurable mobile node for wireless sensor networks in unfriendly environments , 2010, 2010 The 2nd Conference on Environmental Science and Information Application Technology.