CAREER: Agility in Legged Locomotion

拟议研究的总体目标是建立一个腿部运动实验室的基础，该实验室将为研究生和本科生提供所需的基础设施、设备和支助，以获得利用腿部运动的高性能机器人的设计和控制领域的研究经验。拟议的研究重点是设计腿部运动系统以提高灵活性，尽管涉及少量的控制器开发。在这里，敏捷性是指不能通过使用步态或其他涉及预定运动基元的运动策略来完全解决的非周期性运动。设计方法以开发性能分析为中心，根据腿部系统利用与环境的接触来加速其身体的能力来描述腿部系统的动态灵活性。除了性能分析，预期的结果还包括敏捷性性能测量和执行器选择方法，以及对运动学和动力学之间的相互作用的研究，这将导致高性能的腿式运动系统。这些开发旨在帮助生产对其环境具有高度响应性和适应性的腿式系统，从而提高它们在几个对社会有巨大好处的不同应用领域的效用。这些领域包括搜索和救援，例如在国家公园寻找失踪的徒步旅行者，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.