Abstract
Thanks to their flexible trunk, many quadrupeds are capable of highly power efficient gaits. The backbone, tendons and musculature help their different gaits, especially running, by storing and releasing elastic energy. Additionally, they also help a smooth deceleration and a fast acceleration of the different parts of the body involved during running. In this work we present our studies aimed at modeling and reproducing such phenomena for efficient robot locomotion. In addition, we studied how to amplify such effect when the frequency of the backbone is brought close to the natural resonant frequency of the compliant structure. We demonstrate that a flexible artificial structure representing the backbone, muscle and tendons, driven to quasi-resonant oscillations is capable of dramatically reducing the energy required to maintain oscillations. At the same time, such oscillations increase their amplitude. Such effect will be used to design fast running and energy efficient quadruped robots.
Keywords
- Bio-inspiration
- Quadrupedal locomotion
- Compliant structures
- Energy efficiency
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Acknowledgments
This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 820971 (“ROBOMINERS”) and from the RoboCity2030-DIH-CM, Madrid Robotics Digital Innovation Hub, S2018/NMT-4331, funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and co-funded by Structural Funds of the EU. The authors acknowledge the help of Prof. Maria Consuelo Huerta of the Department of Structural Mechanics and Industrial Constructions and Alvaro Nieto Carrero of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
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Parra Ricaurte, E.A., Dominguez, S., Rossi, C. (2022). Low Energy Consumption Quadrupedal Locomotion with Quasi-resonant Compliant Backbone. In: Gusikhin, O., Madani, K., Zaytoon, J. (eds) Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics. ICINCO 2020. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 793. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92442-3_14
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