The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the design of a model-based controller that can achieve dynamical self-righting of a hexapod robot. Extending on our earlier work in this domain, we introduce a tractable multi-point contact model with Coulomb friction. We contrast the singularities inherent to the new model with other available methods and show that for our specific application, it yields dynamics which are well-defined. We then present a feedback controller that achieves "maximal" performance under morphological and actuation constraints, while ensuring the validity of the model by staying away from singularities. Finally, through systematic experiments, we demonstrate that our controller is capable of robust flipping behavior.

Keywords

legged robot, model-based control, contact modeling, flipping, RHex

Notes

Sponsor: DARPA/SPAWAR

Grant ID: N66001-00-C-8026

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Microdynamic Systems Laboratory

Associated Project(s): RHex Robot

Number of pages: 16

Text Reference

Uluc Saranli, Alfred Rizzi, and Daniel E. Koditschek, "Multi-Point Contact Models for Dynamic Self-Righting of a Hexapod Robot," Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR '04), July, 2004, pp. 75-90.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Saranli_2004_4837,
   author = "Uluc Saranli and Alfred Rizzi and Daniel E. Koditschek",
   title = "Multi-Point Contact Models for Dynamic Self-Righting of a Hexapod Robot",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR '04)",
   pages = "75-90",
   month = "July",
   year = "2004",
}

The Robotics Institute

Menu