Oncilla robot: a versatile open-source quadruped research robot with compliant pantograph legs
This work addresses the steep hardware and control design hurdles in academic legged robot research by providing an open-source platform, though it is incremental as it builds on existing bioinspired approaches.
The authors tackled the challenge of designing a versatile quadruped robot for research by introducing Oncilla, an open-source robot with compliant pantograph legs, and demonstrated that agile locomotion is possible without sensory signals, with robust tracking achieved when feedback control is added.
We present Oncilla robot, a novel mobile, quadruped legged locomotion machine. This large-cat sized, 5.1 robot is one of a kind of a recent, bioinspired legged robot class designed with the capability of model-free locomotion control. Animal legged locomotion in rough terrain is clearly shaped by sensor feedback systems. Results with Oncilla robot show that agile and versatile locomotion is possible without sensory signals to some extend, and tracking becomes robust when feedback control is added (Ajaoolleian 2015). By incorporating mechanical and control blueprints inspired from animals, and by observing the resulting robot locomotion characteristics, we aim to understand the contribution of individual components. Legged robots have a wide mechanical and control design parameter space, and a unique potential as research tools to investigate principles of biomechanics and legged locomotion control. But the hardware and controller design can be a steep initial hurdle for academic research. To facilitate the easy start and development of legged robots, Oncilla-robot's blueprints are available through open-source. [...]