CAREER: Agility in Legged Locomotion

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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.