INSPIRE: Legged Locomotion for Desert Research

INSPIRE项目得到了计算机和信息科学与工程系、信息和智能系统司、地球科学司、地球科学司以及国际和综合活动办公室的支持。沙尘暴威胁着世界。它们影响到几乎每个大陆的大量人口，破坏居住，扰乱交通，威胁农业、生物多样性、人类健康和生命，并使环境退化（荒漠化）。一个由科学家和工程师组成的团队正在开发一种自主腿机器人研究助手，设计用于在恶劣的沙漠环境中工作，目的是收集迄今为止无法获得的风和沙运动的测量数据，这些测量数据对人类来说太不舒服和危险了。这些数据可能为尘埃产生及其全球影响提供新的见解，这可能会对干旱地区气候变化导致的环境退化的预测产生重大影响。同时，满足科学家要求的强大的移动性和感知能力将推进机器人技术的基础和实践。最终，这种新型合作使控制土壤粉尘排放的进展成为可能，可以延长农业生态系统的可持续性，并改善下风人口中心的空气质量。传统上认为，沙尘排放会释放出以前沉积在土壤中的沉积物，但越来越多的证据表明，沙尘磨损实际上可能会产生大量的新尘埃。建立沙海作为粉尘工厂，而不是简单的粉尘储存库，代表了一个定性上的新结果，将在风成学和气候科学中产生连锁反应。但是，我们感兴趣的严重事件是现有的传统仪器无法探测到的，它们对飞行、轮式甚至履带式车辆构成了目前无法克服的挑战。风成科学需要有腿的机器，在我们感兴趣的环境条件下，通过陡峭、移动的斜坡和破碎的地面。在简单地形上的稳定运行在很大程度上已经解决了机器人技术的问题，但是在几何复杂、不稳定、脆弱的沙漠地形特征上的过渡机动和敏捷谈判对腿式运动提出了令人生畏的挑战，需要新的转向、步态控制和感知方法。

This INSPIRE project is supported by the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, the Directorate of Geosciences, Division of Earth Sciences, and the Office of International and Integrative Activities. Sand and dust storms menace the world. They impact large human populations on nearly every continent, damage habitation, disrupt transportation, threaten agriculture, biodiversity, human health and life, and degrade the environment (desertification). A team of scientists and engineers is developing an autonomous legged robot research assistant, designed to operate within harsh desert environments for purposes of gathering heretofore unavailable measurements of wind and sand movement under conditions far too uncomfortable and dangerous for human presence. These data may offer new insights into dust production and its global effects that could significantly impact predictions of environmental degradation by climate change in drylands. At the same time, meeting the formidable mobility and perceptual capabilities arising from scientists' requirements will advance the foundations and practice of robotics. Ultimately, advances in control of dust emissions from soils made possible by this novel collaboration could prolong the sustainability of the agroecosystem and result in improved air quality of downwind population centers.Dust emission has traditionally been assumed to release sediment previously deposited in soil, but there is growing evidence that sand abrasion may actually produce significant quantities of new dust. Establishing sand seas as dust factories, rather than simply dust reservoirs represents a qualitatively new result that would cascade through aeolian and climate science. But the severe events of interest are hidden from existing conventional instruments and they pose presently insurmountable challenges to flying, wheeled or even tracked vehicles. Aeolian science needs legged machines to negotiate the steep, shifting slopes, and broken ground under the environmental conditions of interest. Steady running over simple terrain is a largely solved problem in robotics, but transitional maneuvers and agile negotiation of geometrically complex, unstable, fragile terrain characteristic of desert substrates pose a daunting next challenge for legged locomotion, requiring new approaches to turning, gait control, and perception.