Tanaka Hiroaki, Chen Tsung-Yuan, Hosoda Koh
Adaptive Robotics Laboratory, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Japan.
Front Robot AI. 2021 Apr 22;8:629523. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2021.629523. eCollection 2021.
Dynamic locomotion of a quadruped robot emerges from interaction between the robot body and the terrain. When the robot has a soft body, dynamic locomotion can be realized using a simple controller. This study investigates dynamic turning of a soft quadruped robot by changing the phase difference among the legs of the robot. We develop a soft quadruped robot driven by McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles. The phase difference between the hind and fore legs is fixed whereas that between the left and right legs is changed to enable the robot to turn dynamically. Since the robot legs are soft, the contact pattern between the legs and the terrain can be varied adaptively by simply changing the phase difference. Experimental results demonstrate that changes in the phase difference lead to changes in the contact time of the hind legs, and as a result, the soft robot can turn dynamically.
四足机器人的动态运动源于机器人身体与地形之间的相互作用。当机器人具有柔软的身体时，使用简单的控制器就可以实现动态运动。本研究通过改变机器人腿部之间的相位差来研究软四足机器人的动态转向。我们开发了一种由麦基本气动人工肌肉驱动的软四足机器人。后腿和前腿之间的相位差是固定的，而左右腿之间的相位差则会改变，以使机器人能够动态转向。由于机器人的腿部是柔软的，只需改变相位差，腿部与地形之间的接触模式就可以自适应地变化。实验结果表明，相位差的变化会导致后腿接触时间的变化，结果，软机器人能够动态转向。
