Cooper Dynamics and Control - Using compliant leg design for impact attenuation of airdrop landings of quadruped robots

Abstract

Most airdropped cargo use a combination of one or more parachutes and an impact attenuation system to land safely. The latter adds cost, weight and complexity. However, by using their legs for impact attenuation, airdropped quadruped robots may avoid the need for such a system. In this paper, various leg configurations for attenuating impact of airborne landings were studied and tested. Using simple lumped element models for simulation and analysis, a quadruped robot with a three-segment leg was designed and built. This model was validated with experiments with a small scale 20 cm-tall test robot. During the experiments, the test robot experienced 7.7 \(\times\) 10 m/s\(^2\) or 7.9 g-acceleration when dropped from height of 37.85 cm. This result is much better than the result of 1.4 \(\times\) 10\(^2\) m/s\(^2\) or 14.7g-acceleration when dropped at 10% of the original height with the same robot equipped with rigid legs. Such compliant leg design could be potentially used for impact attenuation of airdrop landings of robots five times larger.

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Citation

BibTeX citation:

@misc{song; dirk luchtenburg2017,
  author = {Song; Dirk Luchtenburg, Yeeho},
  title = {Using Compliant Leg Design for Impact Attenuation of Airdrop
    Landings of Quadruped Robots},
  date = {2017-07-24},
  url = {https://dluchten.github.io/publications/song2017ieee},
  doi = {10.1109/ICRA.2017.7989427},
  langid = {en},
  abstract = {Most airdropped cargo use a combination of one or more
    parachutes and an impact attenuation system to land safely. The
    latter adds cost, weight and complexity. However, by using their
    legs for impact attenuation, airdropped quadruped robots may avoid
    the need for such a system. In this paper, various leg
    configurations for attenuating impact of airborne landings were
    studied and tested. Using simple lumped element models for
    simulation and analysis, a quadruped robot with a three-segment leg
    was designed and built. This model was validated with experiments
    with a small scale 20 cm-tall test robot. During the experiments,
    the test robot experienced 7.7 \$\textbackslash times\$ 10
    m/s\$\^{}2\$ or 7.9 g-acceleration when dropped from height of 37.85
    cm. This result is much better than the result of 1.4
    \$\textbackslash times\$ 10\$\^{}2\$ m/s\$\^{}2\$ or
    14.7g-acceleration when dropped at 10\% of the original height with
    the same robot equipped with rigid legs. Such compliant leg design
    could be potentially used for impact attenuation of airdrop landings
    of robots five times larger.}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Song; Dirk Luchtenburg, Yeeho. 2017. “Using Compliant Leg Design for Impact Attenuation of Airdrop Landings of Quadruped Robots.” IEEE ICRA 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2017.7989427.