Abstract
While it is expected to build robotic limbs with multiple degrees of freedom (DoF) inspired by nature, a single DoF design remains fundamental, providing benefits that include, but are not limited to, simplicity, robustness, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency. Mechanisms, especially those with multiple links and revolute joints connected in closed loops, play an enabling factor in introducing motion diversity for 1-DoF systems, which are usually constrained by self-collision during a full-cycle range of motion. This study presents a novel computational approach to designing one-degree-of-freedom (1-DoF) overconstrained robotic limbs for a desired spatial trajectory, while achieving energy-efficient, self-collision-free motion in full-cycle rotations. Firstly, we present the geometric optimization problem of linkage-based robotic limbs in a generalized formulation for self-collision-free design. Next, we formulate the spatial trajectory generation problem with the overconstrained linkages by optimizing the similarity and dynamic-related metrics. We further optimize the geometric shape of the overconstrained linkage to ensure smooth and collision-free motion driven by a single actuator. We validated our proposed method through various experiments, including personalized automata and bio-inspired hexapod robots. The resulting hexapod robot, featuring overconstrained robotic limbs, demonstrated outstanding energy efficiency during forward walking.
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BibTeX (Download)
@article{Gu2025OCLimbDesign,
title = {One-DoF Robotic Design of Overconstrained Limbs with Energy-Efficient, Self-Collision-Free Motion},
author = {Yuping Gu and Bangchao Huang and Haoran Sun and Ronghan Xu and Jiayi Yin and Wei Zhang and Fang Wan and Jia Pan and Chaoyang Song},
url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.22002},
doi = {10.1016/j.fmre.2025.09.023},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-09-26},
urldate = {2025-09-26},
journal = {Fundamental Research},
volume = {0},
number = {0},
issue = {0},
pages = {0},
abstract = {While it is expected to build robotic limbs with multiple degrees of freedom (DoF) inspired by nature, a single DoF design remains fundamental, providing benefits that include, but are not limited to, simplicity, robustness, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency. Mechanisms, especially those with multiple links and revolute joints connected in closed loops, play an enabling factor in introducing motion diversity for 1-DoF systems, which are usually constrained by self-collision during a full-cycle range of motion. This study presents a novel computational approach to designing one-degree-of-freedom (1-DoF) overconstrained robotic limbs for a desired spatial trajectory, while achieving energy-efficient, self-collision-free motion in full-cycle rotations. Firstly, we present the geometric optimization problem of linkage-based robotic limbs in a generalized formulation for self-collision-free design. Next, we formulate the spatial trajectory generation problem with the overconstrained linkages by optimizing the similarity and dynamic-related metrics. We further optimize the geometric shape of the overconstrained linkage to ensure smooth and collision-free motion driven by a single actuator. We validated our proposed method through various experiments, including personalized automata and bio-inspired hexapod robots. The resulting hexapod robot, featuring overconstrained robotic limbs, demonstrated outstanding energy efficiency during forward walking.},
note = {Accepted},
keywords = {Authorship - Corresponding, JCR Q1, Jour - Fund. Res. (FMRE)},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
