Effective Locomotion at Multiple Stride Frequencies Using Proprioceptive Feedback on a Legged Microrobot
This work addresses the challenge of enhancing locomotion capabilities for small legged robots in dynamic conditions, representing an incremental advance in robotics.
The researchers tackled the problem of enabling small legged robots to operate effectively across multiple stride frequencies by developing a proprioceptive feedback system, achieving accurate position estimation and control with less than 16% root-mean-square error and demonstrating improved locomotion performance such as low cost-of-transport of 3.33 and minimal leg slippage under 10%.
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the development of small legged robots capable of operation at multiple stride frequencies using multi-degree-of-freedom leg trajectories. Proprioceptive sensing and control is key to extending the capabilities of these robots to a broad range of operating conditions. In this work, we use concomitant sensing for piezoelectric actuation with a computationally efficient framework for estimation and control of leg trajectories on a quadrupedal microrobot. We demonstrate accurate position estimation (< 16% root-mean-square error) and control (16% root-mean-square tracking error) during locomotion across a wide range of stride frequencies (10-50 Hz). This capability enables the exploration of two bioinspired parametric leg trajectories designed to reduce leg slip and increase locomotion performance (e.g., speed, cost-of-transport, etc.). Using this approach, we demonstrate high performance locomotion at stride frequencies of (10-30 Hz) where the robot's natural dynamics result in poor open-loop locomotion. Furthermore, we validate the biological hypotheses that inspired the our trajectories and identify regions of highly dynamic locomotion, low cost-of-transport (3.33), and minimal leg slippage (< 10%).