CAREER: Agility in Legged Locomotion

拟议研究的总体目标是建立一个腿运动实验室，将提供研究生和本科生所需的基础设施，设备和支持，以获得研究经验的设计和控制的高性能机器人，利用腿运动的领域的基础。拟议的研究重点是设计腿运动系统，以提高敏捷性，虽然涉及少量的控制器开发。 在这里，敏捷性与非周期性运动有关，这些非周期性运动不能通过使用步态或涉及预定运动基元的其他运动策略来完全解决。设计方法围绕性能分析的发展，它描述了腿系统的动态灵活性方面的能力，利用与环境的接触，以加速他们的身体。除了性能分析，预期的结果包括敏捷性的性能指标和致动器的选择方法，以及运动学和动力学之间的相互作用，导致在一个高性能的腿运动系统的研究。 这些开发旨在帮助生产腿式系统，这些腿式系统对环境具有高度响应性和适应性，从而提高它们在几个不同应用领域的实用性，对社会有很大的好处。 这些领域包括搜索和救援，例如在国家公园寻找迷路的徒步旅行者或寻找灾难性事件的幸存者，以及行星探索和人类服务机器人。

The overall objective of the proposed research is to establish the foundation of a legged locomotion laboratory that will provide the infrastructure, equipment and support required for graduate and undergraduate students to obtain research experience in the areas of design and control of high-performance robots that utilize legged locomotion. The proposed research focuses on designing legged locomotion systems for increased agility, although a small amount of controller development is involved. Here agility is concerned with aperiodic motions which are not fully addressed by the use of gait or other locomotion strategies involving predetermined motion primitives. The design methodologies center around the development of a performance analysis which describes the dynamic dexterity of legged systems in terms of their ability to use contact with the environment to accelerate their bodies. In addition to the performance analysis, the expected results include agility performance measures and actuator selection methodologies, as well as a study of the interplay between kinematics and dynamics that results in a high-performance legged locomotion system. These developments are intended to aid in the production of legged systems which are highly responsive and adaptable to their environment, thereby improving their utility in several diverse application areas of great benefit to society. These areas include search and rescue, for instance searching for lost hikers in national parks or locating survivors of catastrophic events, as well as planetary exploration and human-service robotics.