Enabling Dynamic Behaviors With Aerodynamic Drag in Lightweight Tails
Enabling Dynamic Behaviors With Aerodynamic Drag in Lightweight Tails
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DOI：
10.1109/tro.2020.3045644
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发表时间：
2021-08-01
影响因子：
7.8
通讯作者：
Johnson, Aaron M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Norby, Joseph;Li, Jun Yang;Johnson, Aaron M.
许多腿敏捷的动物在奔跑、跳跃和转弯时，用轻巧、毛茸茸的尾巴来调节方向。大多数尝试相同任务的机器人要么没有尾巴，要么使用具有高惯性的尾巴，这可能导致不切实际的有效载荷和能源成本。受到大自然对这种权衡的解决方案的启发，我们探索了气动阻力尾在重新定位任务中的使用。在这篇文章中，我们提出了一个模型的气动阻力，并从这个推导出一个度量，允许直接比较气动和惯性尾翼。受此模型的启发，我们构建了一个尾部，以最大限度地提高效率，同时最小化惯性。我们证明了这个尾巴上执行的四足机器人的两个动态行为的效用。首先，在空中重定向中，机器人在一个身体长度内实现了90度的旋转，其性能与惯性尾巴相同，但只有37%的归一化惯性。第二，机器人的前向加速度提高了12%，尽管系统质量比无尾版本增加了10%。这些结果表明，气动阻力可以提供显着的控制权力的机器人，同时减少有效载荷和能源成本。
Many agile legged animals employ lightweight, furry tails to regulate orientation during running, leaping, and turning. Most robots attempting the same tasks either lack a tail or employ one with high inertia, which can induce impractical payload and energy costs. Inspired by nature's solution to this tradeoff, we explore the use of aerodynamic drag tails in reorientation tasks. In this article, we present a model of the aerodynamic drag and from this derive a metric that allows for direct comparison between aerodynamic and inertial tails. Motivated by this model, we construct a tail to maximize this effectiveness while minimizing inertia. We demonstrate the utility of this tail for two dynamic behaviors executed on a quadrupedal robot. First, in aerial reorientation the robot achieves a 90 degrees rotation within one body length of fall at the same performance as an inertial tail but with just 37% of the normalized inertia. Second, the forward acceleration of the robot is improved by 12% despite increasing the system mass by 10% over a tailless version. These results show that aerodynamic drag can provide significant control authority for a robot while decreasing the payload and energy cost.