Inclined Surface Locomotion Strategies for Spherical Tensegrity Robots

This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates robust climbing on inclined surfaces in hardware experiment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2017-08
Main Authors: Lee-Huang, Chen, Cera, Brian, Zhu, Edward L, Edmunds, Riley, Rice, Franklin, Bronars, Antonia, Tang, Ellande, Malekshahi, Saunon R, Romero, Osvaldo, Agogino, Adrian K, Agogino, Alice M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuation
Algorithms
Cables
Computer simulation
Hardware
Locomotion
Optimization
Robot control
Robot dynamics
Robots
Tensegrity
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Summary:This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates robust climbing on inclined surfaces in hardware experiments and speeds significantly faster than previous spherical tensegrity models. This robot is an improvement over other iterations in the TT-series and the first tensegrity to achieve reliable locomotion on inclined surfaces of up to 24\degree. We analyze locomotion in simulation and hardware under single and multi-cable actuation, and introduce two novel multi-cable actuation policies, suited for steep incline climbing and speed, respectively. We propose compelling justifications for the increased dynamic ability of the robot and motivate development of optimization algorithms able to take advantage of the robot's increased control authority.
ISSN:2331-8422