Adaptation of Flipper-Mud Interactions Enables Effective Terrestrial Locomotion on Muddy Substrates
Adaptation of Flipper-Mud Interactions Enables Effective Terrestrial Locomotion on Muddy Substrates
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DOI：
10.1109/lra.2023.3323123
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发表时间：
2023-12
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Shipeng Liu;Boyuan Huang;Feifei Qian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Shipeng Liu;Boyuan Huang;Feifei Qian
在土壤成分和含水量变化很大的天然泥泞地形上行驶是复杂且具有挑战性的。为了了解泥浆特性和机器人与泥浆相互作用策略如何影响泥浆上的运动性能，我们研究了弹涂鱼机器人在精确控制沙、粘土和水比例的合成泥浆上的地面运动。我们观察到机器人速度对泥浆含水量的非单调依赖性。机器人速度在中等含水量（25%–26%）的泥浆上最大，但在较高或较低含水量时显着下降。泥浆反作用力的测量揭示了两种不同的失效机制。在高含水量时，泥浆剪切强度降低导致机器人附肢大幅滑移，步长显着缩短。在低含水量时，泥浆吸力增大导致附肢被卡住，导致机器人本体在摆动阶段产生较大的负位移。一个简单的模型成功捕获了观察到的机器人性能，并提供了适应策略，使机器人速度提高了 200% 以上。我们的研究是将机器人移动性从简单的基质扩展到更广泛的复杂、异构地形的第一步。
Moving on natural muddy terrains, where soil composition and water content vary significantly, is complex and challenging. To understand how mud properties and robot-mud interaction strategies affect locomotion performance on mud, we study the terrestrial locomotion of a mudskipper-inspired robot on synthetic mud with precisely-controlled ratios of sand, clay, and water. We observed a non-monotonic dependence of the robot speed on mud water content. Robot speed was the largest on mud with intermediate levels of water content (25%–26%), but decreased significantly on higher or lower water content. Measurements of mud reaction force revealed two distinct failure mechanisms. At high water content, the reduced mud shear strength led to a large slippage of robot appendages and a significantly reduced step length. At low water content, the increased mud suction force caused appendage entrapment, resulting in a large negative displacement in the robot body during the swing phase. A simple model successfully captured the observed robot performance, and informed adaptation strategies that increased robot speed by more than 200%. Our study is a beginning step to extend robot mobility beyond simple substrates towards a wider range of complex, heterogeneous terrains.