CLAWAR 2012 Special Session

Throwing Your Weight Around:

Using Appendage Inertia

Aaron M. Johnson, D. E. Koditschek
GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Animals use the inertia of appendages such as arms, legs, and tails to do a wide variety of tasks. Most famously may be a falling cat that gyrates its legs and tail to land on its feet. Lizards use their tails to transition quickly over uneven terrain. Humans swing their arms to help balance their walking gait. Biology has given as examples a wide variety of designs for appendages, and an even wider variety of uses.

Only recently though have robots had enough power, dexterity and control to carefully study such questions. There appear to be great potential benefits for self righting, dynamic transitions, and efficiency improvements. Will adding appendage inertia make robots better, faster, stronger, or just more complex and failure prone?

This special session focused on how animals and robots can use their appendage inertia to achieve new or better behaviors. The papers presented in this session were:

The TAYLRoACH robot.

Effect of inertial tail on yaw rate of 45 gram legged robot
N. J. Kohut, D. W. Haldane, D. Zarrouk and R.S. Fearing
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots, Baltimore, MD, USA, 23-26 July, 2012.
Biomimetic Millisystems Lab

The XRL robot with Tail.

Tail assisted dynamic self righting
A .M. Johnson, T. Libby, E. Chang-Siu, M. Tomizuka, R. J. Full and D. E. Koditschek
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots, Baltimore, MD, USA, 23-26 July, 2012.
Kod*lab, Poly-PEDAL Laboratory, Mechanical Systems Control Laboratory

A two-link rigid-body model of sagittal plane dynamics can be used to describe how rapid adjustments of the thoracic abdominal angle.

Inertial redirection of thrust forces for flight stabilization
A. Demir, M. M. Ankarali, J. P. Dyhr, K. A. Morgansen, T. L. Daniel and N. J. Cowan
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots, Baltimore, MD, USA, 23-26 July, 2012.
Limbs Laboratory, Daniel Lab, Nonlinear Dynamics and Control Lab

The simple hexapod robot with an elastically-suspended load.

Mobility of legged robot locomotion with elastically-suspended loads over rough terrain
J. Ackerman, X. Da and J. Seipel
Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots, Baltimore, MD, USA, 23-26 July, 2012.


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