431 research outputs found
On the Biomimetic Design of Agile-Robot Legs
The development of functional legged robots has encountered its limits in human-made actuation technology. This paper describes research on the biomimetic design of legs for agile quadrupeds. A biomimetic leg concept that extracts key principles from horse legs which are responsible for the agile and powerful locomotion of these animals is presented. The proposed biomimetic leg model defines the effective leg length, leg kinematics, limb mass distribution, actuator power, and elastic energy recovery as determinants of agile locomotion, and values for these five key elements are given. The transfer of the extracted principles to technological instantiations is analyzed in detail, considering the availability of current materials, structures and actuators. A real leg prototype has been developed following the biomimetic leg concept proposed. The actuation system is based on the hybrid use of series elasticity and magneto-rheological dampers which provides variable compliance for natural motion. From the experimental evaluation of this prototype, conclusions on the current technological barriers to achieve real functional legged robots to walk dynamically in agile locomotion are presented
DYLEMA: Using walking robots for landmine detection and location
Detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines is an important worldwide concern. A huge
number of landmines has been deployed over the last twenty years, and demining will take
several more decades, even if no more mines were deployed in future. An adequate mineclearance
rate can only be achieved by using new technologies such as improved sensors,
efficient manipulators and mobile robots. This paper presents some basic ideas on the
configuration of a mobile system for detecting and locating antipersonnel landmines efficiently
and effectively. The paper describes the main features of the overall system, which consists of
a sensor head that can detect certain landmine types, a manipulator to move the sensor head
over large areas, a locating system based on a global-positioning system, a remote supervisor
computer and a legged robot used as the subsystemsâ carrier. The whole system has been
configured to work in a semi-autonomous mode with a view also to robot mobility and
energy efficiency.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry
of Science and Technology under Grant CICYT
DPI2001-1595 and DPI2004-05824.Peer reviewe
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