Collaborative Research: Dynamics of Running on Variable Inclines

开发能够有效地在平坦、倾斜、凹凸不平和可变形的表面上行走的腿式机器人的能力，对于广泛的民用(例如搜索和救援)和军事(例如侦察、探雷)应用至关重要。事实证明，这项任务对传统的控制策略特别有问题，然而，与合成动物不同的是，许多动物能够非常轻松地超越丛林、洞穴、沙漠、建筑和瓦砾堆等复杂环境。尽管昆虫体型很小，但它们可以根据情况需要攀爬、爬行或奔跑，从而在几乎任何环境中发挥作用。尽管最近在开发仿生机器人方面取得了进展，这些机器人能够在不平坦的地面上移动，以及其他能够(缓慢)爬上陡峭表面的机器人，但目前还没有能够在垂直和水平组合中动态操作的腿部机器。最近发现，快速攀爬的蟑螂和壁虎利用它们的腿主动将身体拉向脚部，而不是像跑步时那样将身体推开，这启发了垂直跑步的新动态模型和第一个动态爬行机器人的构建。这种攀岩模型和机器人的显著特点是在快速攀爬时故意使用较大的横向拉力。由于实验中观察到的拉力运动似乎没有提供明显的能量优势，我们假设这种从一边到另一边的爬升主要是出于稳定性考虑。该项目进行昆虫生物力学、动力学建模和机器人合成的综合研究，以确定横向振动在跑步和攀登不同程度倾斜时的重要性和适当利用。这项研究试图回答这些问题，不仅是为了深入了解动物生物力学，还为了提出可用于开发下一代动态腿部机器人的指导原则。特别是，我们的目标是了解昆虫的神经肌肉控制策略与在变化的环境(即坡度和底物)中的功能表现之间的联系，开发降阶模型来确定横向运动模式如何有助于提高稳定性和运动性能，并开发一个新型的机器人测试平台来经验地测试受生物启发的运动模型的预测，并提供关于如何明确地利用横向动力学来提高腿部机器人在不同地形和底物上的移动性的见解。

The ability to develop legged robots that can effectively run over flat, inclined, uneven and deformable surfaces is critical to a wide range of civilian (e.g., search and rescue) and military (e.g., reconnaissance, mine detection) applications. This task has proven particularly problematic to traditional control strategies, yet many animals, unlike their synthetic counterparts, are able to transcend complex environments such as jungles, caves, deserts, buildings, and piles of rubble with remarkable ease. Despite their miniscule size, insects can function in almost any environment by means of their ability to climb, crawl, or run as the situation demands. Although recent progress has been made in the development of bio-inspired robots capable of locomotion over uneven ground, and others that can (slowly) climb sheer surfaces, no legged machines currently exist that can dynamically operate in a combination of vertical and horizontal regimes. The recent discovery that rapidly climbing cockroaches and geckos utilize their legs to actively pull the body toward the feet, rather than pushing the body away as in running, has inspired a new dynamic model for vertical running and the construction of the first dynamic climbing robot. The salient feature of this climbing model and robot is the intentional utilization of large lateral pulling forces when rapidly climbing. Since these pulling motions observed experimentally do not appear to provide an obvious energetic advantage, we hypothesize that this type of side to side climbing is driven primarily by stability considerations. This project pursues an integrated study of insect biomechanics, dynamic modeling, and robotic synthesis to determine the importance and proper utilization of lateral oscillations in running and climbing over various degrees of incline. The study seeks to answer these questions not only to provide insight into animal biomechanics, but also to produce guiding principles that can be utilized to develop the next generation of dynamic legged robots. In particular we aim to understand the connection between neuromuscular control strategies in insects and functional performance in changing environments (i.e. slope and substrate), develop reduced order models to determine how lateral motion pattern contribute to improved stability and locomotion performance, and develop a novel robotic test platform to empirically test the predictions of the bio-inspired locomotion models and provide insight into how lateral dynamics can be explicitly utilized to improve the mobility of legged robots over varying terrain and substrates.