Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-Time Systems, School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstrasse 3, 85748 Munich, Germany.
Machine Intelligence Lab, Department Engineering, University of Technology Nuremberg, Ulmenstrasse 52i, 90443 Nuremberg, Germany.
Sci Robot. 2023 Dec 6;8(85):eadg7165. doi: 10.1126/scirobotics.adg7165.
A flexible spine is critical to the motion capability of most animals and plays a pivotal role in their agility. Although state-of-the-art legged robots have already achieved very dynamic and agile movement solely relying on their legs, they still exhibit the type of stiff movement that compromises movement efficiency. The integration of a flexible spine thus appears to be a promising approach to improve their agility, especially for small and underactuated quadruped robots that are underpowered because of size limitations. Here, we show that the lateral flexion of a compliant spine can promote both walking speed and maneuver agility for a neurorobotic mouse (NeRmo). We present NeRmo as a biomimetic robotic mouse that mimics the morphology of biological mice and their muscle-tendon actuation system. First, by leveraging the lateral flexion of the compliant spine, NeRmo can greatly increase its static stability in an initially unstable configuration by adjusting its posture. Second, the lateral flexion of the spine can also effectively extend the stride length of a gait and therefore improve the walking speeds of NeRmo. Finally, NeRmo shows agile maneuvers that require both a small turning radius and fast walking speed with the help of the spine. These results advance our understanding of spine-based quadruped locomotion skills and highlight promising design concepts to develop more agile legged robots.
灵活的脊柱对于大多数动物的运动能力至关重要，在它们的敏捷性中起着关键作用。尽管最先进的腿式机器人仅依靠其腿部已经实现了非常动态和敏捷的运动，但它们仍然表现出僵硬的运动类型，这会影响运动效率。因此，整合灵活的脊柱似乎是提高其敏捷性的一种有前途的方法，特别是对于由于尺寸限制而动力不足的小型和欠驱动四足机器人。在这里，我们展示了柔性脊柱的横向弯曲可以促进神经机器人鼠（NeRmo）的行走速度和机动敏捷性。我们将 NeRmo 展示为一种仿生机器鼠，它模拟了生物鼠的形态及其肌肉-肌腱驱动系统。首先，通过利用柔性脊柱的横向弯曲，NeRmo 可以通过调整姿势在初始不稳定的配置中大大提高其静态稳定性。其次，脊柱的横向弯曲还可以有效地延长步态的步幅长度，从而提高 NeRmo 的行走速度。最后，在脊柱的帮助下，NeRmo 展示了需要小转弯半径和快速行走速度的敏捷机动。这些结果推进了我们对基于脊柱的四足动物运动技能的理解，并突出了有前途的设计概念，以开发更敏捷的腿式机器人。
