Design Principles for a Family of Direct-Drive Legged Robots

This letter introduces Minitaur, a dynamically running and leaping quadruped, which represents a novel class of direct-drive (DD) legged robots. We present a methodology that achieves the well-known benefits of DD robot design (transparency, mechanical robustness/efficiency, high-actuation bandwidth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 1; no. 2; pp. 900 - 907
Main Authors Kenneally, Gavin, De, Avik, Koditschek, D. E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.07.2016
Subjects
Actuators
Couplings
Force
Kinematics
Legged locomotion
Mechanism Design of Mobile Robots
Multilegged Robots
Novel Actuators for Natural Machine Motion
Torque
Mechanism Design of Mobile Robots
Multilegged Robots
Novel Actuators for Natural Machine Motion
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ISSN2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI10.1109/LRA.2016.2528294

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Summary:This letter introduces Minitaur, a dynamically running and leaping quadruped, which represents a novel class of direct-drive (DD) legged robots. We present a methodology that achieves the well-known benefits of DD robot design (transparency, mechanical robustness/efficiency, high-actuation bandwidth, and increased specific power), affording highly energetic behaviors across our family of machines despite severe limitations in specific force. We quantify DD drivetrain benefits using a variety of metrics, compare our machines' performance to previously reported legged platforms, and speculate on the potential broad-reaching value of "transparency" for legged locomotion.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2016.2528294