Bipedal Robot

有了这个建议，我们寻求获得一个国家的最先进的双足机器人研究动态腿运动。我们的总体科学目标是提高当今腿式机器人在速度、效率和多功能性方面的性能。在这种情况下，我们的研究是专门针对如何利用这样的机器人的机械动力学，以提高其性能的问题。也就是说，我们试图了解腿式机器人如何从重力，惯性和弹性振荡驱动的运动中受益，以减少所使用的能量，提高峰值功率输出或帮助稳定性。我们还对不同步态的使用感兴趣，例如步行或跑步。这些目标受到生物系统的启发：人类和动物在运动方面表现出卓越的表现，他们通过巧妙地利用身体的动力来实现这一目标。我们寻求在机器人系统中实现这些能力，首先使用概念模型，模拟和基于模型的优化来理解驱动自然界机械动力学开发的基本物理原理。例如，我们已经能够证明，如何使用不同的步态可以大大减少能源消耗，提高未来腿式机器人的运动速度。阐明这些基本原则，我们然后开发控制方法，以实现相同的增益在真实的机器人。 这是重要的一步，因为速度、效率和多功能性等性能标准只有在实际的硬件实现中才能充分体现出来。为此，我们寻求获得一个商业级的双足机器人研究平台，该平台能够自主动态腿部运动。也就是说，它的功率重量比是这样的运行和跳跃步态是可能的。 该机器人在其臀部、膝盖和脚踝处具有完全驱动的关节。这些关节是扭矩驱动的，以便于控制，而致动器只表现出很小的反射惯性，以强调机械结构的自然动态。机载传感器可以监控所有关节，通过惯性测量单元估计机器人的姿态，并以三维方式测量机器人前方的地面。传感器和执行器可在开放访问的低级应用程序编程接口中直接访问，用于开发自定义控制算法。该机器人形成一个单元与实验环境组成的计算机控制的仪表跑步机，可以记录地面反作用力，视觉运动捕捉系统，和高架龙门。这种环境将允许安全有效的实验，仪器将提供机器人状态的地面真实测量。这些对于校准和验证目的是必要的，并且可以进一步用于控制。测量的运动学和动力学也是不同步态的主要特征，也是我们工作的核心焦点。

With this proposal, we seek to acquire a state-of-the-art bipedal robot to study dynamic legged locomotion. Our overall scientific goal is to improve the performance of today’s legged robots with respect to their speed, efficiency, and versatility. In this context, our research is specifically targeted at the question of how to exploit the mechanical dynamics of such a robot to improve its performance. That is, we seek to understand how a legged robot can benefit from motions driven by gravity, inertia, and elastic oscillations to reduce the amount of energy used, to improve peak power output, or to aid with stability. We are also interested in the usage of different gaits, such as walking or running.These goals are inspired by biological systems: humans and animals show remarkable performance with regard to locomotion and they do so by cleverly exploiting the dynamics of their body. We seek to enable these abilities in robotic systems, by first using conceptual models, simulations, and model-based optimizations to understand the fundamental physical principles that drive the exploitation of mechanical dynamics in nature. For example, we have already been able to demonstrate, how using different gaits can substantially reduce energy consumption and increase locomotion speed of future legged robots. Incorporating these fundamental principles, we then develop control approaches to realize the same gains on real robots. This is an important step, as performance criteria such as speed, efficiency, and versatility only fully manifest themselves in actual hardware implementations.To this end, we seek to acquire a commercial-grade, bipedal robotic research platform that is capable of autonomous dynamic legged locomotion. That is, its power-to-weight ratio is such that running and hopping gaits are possible. The robot has fully actuated joints at its hip, knees, and ankles. These joints are torque driven to facilitate control, while actuators only exhibit a small reflected inertia to emphasize the natural dynamics of the mechanical structure. On-board sensors allow monitoring all joints, estimating the posture of the robot via an inertial measurement unit, and surveying the ground in front of the robot in three dimensions. Sensors and actuators are directly accessible within an open-access low-level application programming interface for the development of custom control algorithms. The robot forms a unit with an experimental environment consisting of a computer-controlled instrumented treadmill which can record ground reaction forces, a visual motion capture system, and an overhead gantry. This environment will allow for safe and effective experimentation and the instruments will deliver ground truth measurements of the state of the robot. These are imperative for calibration and validation purposes and can be further used for control. The measured kinematics and kinetics are also a main characteristic of different gaits, a core focus of our work.