Gait Transition Principles in Quadruped Robots

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.