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ELE8328 Lecture 2

This document discusses robot stability and locomotion. It covers two ways robots can use effectors: locomotion to move itself and manipulation to move objects. This divides robotics into mobile and manipulator categories. It also discusses different types of locomotion like legs, wheels, and flippers. Stability, both static and dynamic, is important for robots. Static stability means a robot can stand without falling, while dynamic stability allows movement. The alternating tripod gait provides static stability for hexapods by always keeping three legs on the ground. Dynamic stability through control is an alternative but requires more advanced control. Stability remains a challenging problem in robotics.

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75 views20 pages

ELE8328 Lecture 2

This document discusses robot stability and locomotion. It covers two ways robots can use effectors: locomotion to move itself and manipulation to move objects. This divides robotics into mobile and manipulator categories. It also discusses different types of locomotion like legs, wheels, and flippers. Stability, both static and dynamic, is important for robots. Static stability means a robot can stand without falling, while dynamic stability allows movement. The alternating tripod gait provides static stability for hexapods by always keeping three legs on the ground. Dynamic stability through control is an alternative but requires more advanced control. Stability remains a challenging problem in robotics.

Uploaded by

umarsabo
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Robots Stability

Locomotion

• Two basic ways of using effectors:


 to move the robot around => locomotion
 to move other object around => manipulation

• These divide robotics into two mostly separate


categories:
 mobile robotics
 manipulator robotics
Locomotion
• Many kinds of effectors and actuators can be used to move a
robot around.
• The obvious categories are:
– legs (for walking/crawling/climbing/jumping/hopping)
– wheels (for rolling)
– arms (for swinging/crawling/climbing)
– flippers (for swimming)
– ...
• While most animals use legs to get around, legged
locomotion is a very difficult robotic problem, especially
when compared to wheeled locomotion.
Stability
• First, any robot needs to be stable (i.e., not wobble
and fall over easily).
• There are two kinds of stability:
– static and
– dynamic.
• A statically stable robot can stand still without
falling over.
• This is a useful feature, but a difficult one to
achieve:
– it requires that there be enough legs/wheels on the robot
to provide sufficient static points of support.
Stability
• For example, people are not statically stable.
• In order to stand up, which appears effortless to us,
we are actually using active control of our balance.
• Achieved through nerves and muscles and tendons.
• This balancing is largely unconscious:
– it must be learned,
– so that's why it takes babies a while to get it right,
– certain injuries can make it difficult or impossible.
Stability
• With more legs, static stability becomes quite simple.
• In order to remain stable, the robot's Center Of Gravity (COG) must fall under its
polygon of support.
• This polygon is basically the projection between all of its support points onto the
surface.
• So in a two-legged robot, the polygon is really a line.
• Thus the center of gravity cannot be aligned in a stable way with a point on that line
to keep the robot upright.
• Consider now a three-legged robot:
– with its legs in a tripod organization,
– and its body above,
• Such robot produces a stable polygon of support.
• It is thus statically stable.
Stability of standing and walking
• But what happens when a statically stable robot lifts
a leg and tries to move?
• Does its center of gravity stay within the polygon of
support?
• It may or may not, depending on the geometry.
• For certain robot geometries, it is possible (with
various numbers of legs) to always stay statically
stable while walking.
• This is very safe, but it is also very slow and energy
inefficient.
Static Stability
• Sequence of support patterns provide by feet of a quadruped
walking.
• Body and legs move to keep the projection of the center of
mass within the polygon defined by a feet.
• Each vertex is a support foot.
• Dot is the projection.
Titan IV
• TITAN IV (1985)
• The name is an acronym for "Tokyo Institute of Technology, Aruku
Norimono (walking vehicle)".
• Demonstrates static stability
Quadruped kit
from
Lynxmotion
Stability of standing and walking
• A basic assumption of the static gait (statically
stable gait) is that the weight of a leg is negligible
compared to that of the body,
– so that the total center of gravity (COG) of the robot is
not affected by the leg swing.
• Based on this assumption, the conventional static
gait is designed so as to maintain the COG of the
robot inside of the support polygon.
• This polygon is outlined by each support leg's tip
position.
Stability of standing and walking
• The alternative to static stability is dynamic stability
which allows a robot (or animal) to be stable while
moving.
• For example, one-legged hopping robots are
dynamically stable:
– they can hop in place or to various destinations, and not
fall over.
• But they cannot stop and stay standing
– (this is an inverse pendulum balancing problem).
A Stable Hopping Leg
• Robert Ringrose of MIT
AAAI97.
• Hopper robot leg stands on
its own,
• hops up and down,
• maintaining its balance and
correcting it.
• forward, backward left,
right, etc., by changing its
center of gravity.
Stability of standing and walking

• A statically stable robot can:


– 1. use dynamically-stable walking patterns - it is fast,
– 2. use statically stable walking - it is easy.
• A simple way to think about this is by how many legs are up
in the air during the robot's movement (i.e., gait):
– 6 legs is the most popular number as they allow for a very stable
walking gait, the tripod gait .
– if the same three legs move at a time, this is called the alternating
tripod gait.
– if the legs vary, it is called the ripple gait.
Hexapod walking
• A rectangular 6-legged robot can lift three legs at a time to
move forward, and still retain static stability.
• How does it do that?
• It uses the so-called alternating tripod gait, a biologically
common walking pattern for 6 or more legs.
• Characteristic of this gait:
– one middle leg on one side and two non-adjacent legs on the other
side of the body lift and move forward at the same time,
– the other 3 legs remain on the ground and keep the robot statically
stable.
Hexapod and Insect walking

• Roaches move this way, and can do so very


quickly.
• Insects with more than 6 legs (e.g., centipedes
and millipedes), use the ripple gate.
– However, when these insects run really fast, they
switch gates to actually become airborne (and
thus not statically stable) for brief periods of time.
• Biologically inspired
– insects
Hexapods
• Potentially very stable
as the motion of one leg
usually does not affect
vehicle stance.
• Fairly simple to come
up with a control
algorithm
Alternating Tripod Gait
• Walking gaits were
first reported by D.M.
Wilson in 1966.
• A common gait is the
“alternating tripod
gait”.
• Commonly used by
certain insects while
moving slowly.
Hexapod walking
• Statically stable walking is very energy inefficient.
• As an alternative, dynamic stability enables a robot to stay
up while moving.
• This requires active control (i.e., the inverse pendulum
problem).
• Dynamic stability can allow for greater speed, but requires
harder control.
• Balance and stability are very difficult problems in control
and robotics.
• Thus, when you look at most existing robots, they will have
wheels or plenty of legs (at least 6).

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