Design and control of a miniature quadruped rat-inspired robot

Shengjie Wang, Qing Shi, Junhui Gao, Yuxuan Wang, Fansheng Meng, Chang Li, Qiang Huang, Toshio Fukuda

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Robot-rat interaction test is a promising way to characterize the animal sociality for biomedical application. However, currently developed robotic rats are mostly driven by wheels, resulting in limited movement agility. It is an arduous task to realize both the morphology and functionality of rat limbs within restricted dimension. In this specified scale, it is not only difficult to design efficient mechanism to achieve high-speed movement but also difficult to integrate many actuated joints to accomplish multiple motion modes. To address these problems, we modularly designed a miniature quadruped robot making full use of connecting rod mechanism to mimic rat limbs. To generate bio-inspired quadruped gait by using a compact control board, we developed a locomotion controller based on central pattern generators (CPG). Together with particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the stride frequency and length can be adjusted by parameters. Both simulation and experimental tests show that our quadruped rat-inspired robot is able to implement three motion modes. 1) Crouch-standing action: the robotic rat is able to stand up from initial state (kneeling action) without manual support. 2) Forward walking: the robot reaches a maximum speed of 10cm/s. 3) Turning action: the robotic rat has a small turning radius of 12 cm that is only half of its body length. The outperformance of this robotic rat show high promises in performing natural robot-rat interaction in future.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2019 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM 2019
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages346-351
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728124933
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2019
Event2019 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM 2019 - Hong Kong, China
Duration: 8 Jul 201912 Jul 2019

Publication series

NameIEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM
Volume2019-July

Conference

Conference2019 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, AIM 2019
Country/TerritoryChina
CityHong Kong
Period8/07/1912/07/19

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