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Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

We show through experiment and simulation that a high-centered round-bodied legged robot can locomote by generating out-of-phase motions of reaction masses attached to its legs. These leg motions create body attitude oscillations which, when coupled with the slipfree contact constraints, locomote the robot. By varying the mean position of the leg oscillations, the robot can move in different directions in the plane. We also present some simplified models, where body attitude dynamics and contact kinematics are decoupled, to explain this form of legless locomotion.

Keywords

Legless locomotion, Lagrangian dynamics, contact

Notes

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Center for the Foundations of Robotics

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Manipulation Lab

Associated Project(s): Legless Locomotion

Number of pages: 6

Text Reference

Ravi Balasubramanian, Alfred Rizzi, and Matthew T. Mason, "Legless Locomotion: Models and Experimental Demonstration," Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, April, 2004, pp. 1803 - 1808.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Balasubramanian_2004_5286,
   author = "Ravi Balasubramanian and Alfred Rizzi and Matthew T. Mason",
   title = "Legless Locomotion: Models and Experimental Demonstration",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
   pages = "1803 - 1808",
   month = "April",
   year = "2004",
   volume = "2",
}

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