| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 10, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | March 10, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1350879 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
David Miller
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | June 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | May 31, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $400,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $400,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
77 MASSACHUSETTS AVE CAMBRIDGE MA US 02139-4301 (617)253-1000 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
77 MASSACHUSETTS AVE Cambridge MA US 02139-4301 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Robust Intelligence |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Quadrupedalism, pervasive in nature, is a promising locomotion mode for numerous future robotic applications. Utilizing its versatility can play a crucial role in managing unexpected and varying terrains in an efficient and stable manner. Understanding of why, how, and when to use a certain gait is central to successfully building stable, adaptable robots. Gait transition criteria in animals involve an intricate interplay among such biological characteristics as metabolic cost, bone stress, muscle physiology, and social stimuli. Obtaining general principles that are useful in design of robots by studying animals is very challenging. This project investigates the intrinsic nature of dynamic characteristics of quadrupedal gaits and the transitions among them by utilizing appropriate computational models. These models are selected to represent only important dynamic characteristics of quadrupedal gaits and filter out biological aspects that are not essential to the realization of robots. These models help to develop gait selection criteria from the energetics and stability analyses of each gait. The gait selection criteria constitute the basis of the development process of stable gait-transitioning controllers. This project aims to enhance our understanding of quadrupedal locomotion, contributing to future applications such as disaster response robots and new transportation systems. In addition, the project plans to integrate research results with educational activities. The new class on bio-inspired robot provides the opportunities for students to learn how to investigate scientific questions using computational methods and physical robots. The student training includes several outreach activities such as participation in science festivals and developing science exhibitions for K-12 education.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The importance of understanding gait energetics in robots is further motivated by many impressive recent legged machines and potential applications in future. In this project we focused on the energetic analyses and investigation on gait transition principles in quadrupedal robots. The energetics of legged robots were studied in several methods. At first, we studied the impact of gait types simplifying the model significantly and drew a conclusion reasonably match the real data from the robot experiments. Unlike many other vehicles, however, the diversity in control strategies and limb movement details complicates the energetic profile of legged machines. Energetics with an overly simplified model will produce a gait that cannot be realized in real machine due to lack of stability. Therefore, we have to include all the detail parameters of robot controller and full model to ensure the robot?s stability to validate the energetics analysis. In order to combine the energetics with stability of the machines, we developed more realistic stable gait controllers using Model Predictive Control (MPC). Yet, still the general sense of quantification of stability in is still on-going challenge. We report the stability analyses of the controller with MPC. As a part of the effort, we also investigated gait transition algorithm using an innovative metric called leg utility metric using feasible impulse set. Combining support from other funding sources, we also developed a cheaper robot, called Mini-Cheetah, to distribute to other laboratories and further study of gait controller design strategies and energetics. Currently 10 units are in the process of assembly and will be distributed to 5 different institutions. We plan to produce 30 more units to distribute to impact on a bigger community. Gathering data from these future collaborators will enhance the quality of the analyses and provide more comprehensive study of quadrupedal gaits and energetic projection of future mobile robots. The project produces 8 peer-reviewed papers and allow the students present their work in the robotics conferences and engage the legged robot research community.
Last Modified: 08/28/2019
Modified by: Sang Bae Kim
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