An Overconstrained Robotic Leg with Coaxial Quasi-direct Drives for Omni-directional Ground Mobility

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Abstract

Planar mechanisms dominate modern designs of legged robots with remote actuator placement for robust agility in ground mobility. This paper presents a novel design of robotic leg modules using the Bennett linkage, driven by two coaxially arranged quasi-direct actuators capable of omnidirectional ground locomotion. The Bennett linkage belongs to a family of overconstrained linkages with three-dimensional spatial motion and unparalleled joint axes. We present the first work regarding the design, modeling, and optimization of the Bennett leg module, enabling lateral locomotion, like the crabs, that was not capable with robotic legs designed with common planar mechanisms. We further explored the concept of overconstrained robots, which is a class of advanced robots based on the design reconfiguration of the Bennett leg modules, serving as a potential direction for future research.

Links

• doi:10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561829

BibTeX (Download)

@conference{Feng2021AnOverconstrained,
title = {An Overconstrained Robotic Leg with Coaxial Quasi-direct Drives for Omni-directional Ground Mobility},
author = {Shihao Feng and Yuping Gu and Weijie Guo and Yuqin Guo and Fang Wan and Jia Pan and Chaoyang Song},
doi = {10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561829},
year  = {2021},
date = {2021-05-30},
urldate = {2021-05-30},
booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
address = {Xi’an, China},
abstract = {Planar mechanisms dominate modern designs of legged robots with remote actuator placement for robust agility in ground mobility. This paper presents a novel design of robotic leg modules using the Bennett linkage, driven by two coaxially arranged quasi-direct actuators capable of omnidirectional ground locomotion. The Bennett linkage belongs to a family of overconstrained linkages with three-dimensional spatial motion and unparalleled joint axes. We present the first work regarding the design, modeling, and optimization of the Bennett leg module, enabling lateral locomotion, like the crabs, that was not capable with robotic legs designed with common planar mechanisms. We further explored the concept of overconstrained robots, which is a class of advanced robots based on the design reconfiguration of the Bennett leg modules, serving as a potential direction for future research.},
keywords = {Corresponding Author, ICRA},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}