Abstract
Quadrupedal robots consume large amounts of energy while walking or standing, limiting their range and operation time. Moreover, their design involves multiple trade-offs between conflicting requirements, reducing their flexibility and suitability for certain applications despite their advantages in rough and unknown environments. One of the root causes of this situation is the mismatch between the limited capabilities of the actuators and the wide range of requirements for these robots. This work introduces an actively variable transmission design intended to adjust the robot’s characteristics according to its current mission requirements, resulting in more efficient power usage and longer operational times. We designed and built a single-leg prototype and tested it. Experimental results show a decrease of up to 50% in the power consumption of the knee actuator, confirming the theoretical analysis.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abate, A., Hurst, J.W., Hatton, R.L.: Mechanical antagonism in legged robots. In: Robotics: Science and Systems, vol. 6., Ann Arbor, MI (2016)
Badri-Spröwitz, A., Aghamaleki Sarvestani, A., Sitti, M., Daley, M.A.: Birdbot achieves energy-efficient gait with minimal control using avian-inspired leg clutching. Sci. Robot. 7(64) (2022). eabg4055
Bjelonic, M., Sankar, P.K., Bellicoso, C.D., Vallery, H., Hutter, M.: Rolling in the deep-hybrid locomotion for wheeled-legged robots using online trajectory optimization. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 5(2), 3626–3633 (2020)
Bouman, A., Ginting, M.F., Alatur, N., Palieri, M., Fan, D.D., Touma, T., Pailevanian, T., Kim, S.K., Otsu, K., Burdick, J., et al.: Autonomous spot: Long-range autonomous exploration of extreme environments with legged locomotion. In: 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 2518–2525. IEEE (2020)
Elftman, H.: The function of muscles in locomotion. Am. J. Physiol.-Legacy Content 125(2), 357–366 (1939)
Flynn, L., Geeroms, J., Jimenez-Fabian, R., Vanderborght, B., Vitiello, N., Lefeber, D.: Ankle-knee prosthesis with active ankle and energy transfer: development of the cyberlegs alpha-prosthesis. Robot. Autonom Syst. 73, 4–15 (2015). Wearable Robotics
Hirose, S., Arikawa, K.: Coupled and decoupled actuation of robotic mechanisms. Adv. Robot. 15(2), 125–138 (2001)
Hwangbo, J., Tsounis, V., Kolvenbach, H., Hutter, M.: Cable-driven actuation for highly dynamic robotic systems. In: 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 8543–8550 (2018)
Kamikawa, Y., Kinoshita, M., Takasugi, N., Sugimoto, K., Kai, T., Kito, T., Sakamoto, A., Nagasaka, K., Kawanami, Y.: Tachyon: design and control of high payload, robust, and dynamic quadruped robot with series-parallel elastic actuators. In: 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 894–901. IEEE (2021)
Kolvenbach, H., Hampp, E., Barton, P., Zenkl, R., Hutter, M.: Towards jumping locomotion for quadruped robots on the moon. In: 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 5459–5466. IEEE (2019)
Mazumdar, A., Spencer, S.J., Hobart, C., Salton, J., Quigley, M., Wu, T., Bertrand, S., Pratt, J., Buerger, S.P.: Parallel elastic elements improve energy efficiency on the steppr bipedal walking robot. IEEE/ASME Trans. Mechatron. 22(2), 898–908 (2016)
Miller, I.D., Cladera, F., Cowley, A., Shivakumar, S.S., Lee, E.S., Jarin-Lipschitz, L., Bhat, A., Rodrigues, N., Zhou, A., Cohen, A., et al.: Mine tunnel exploration using multiple quadrupedal robots. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 5(2), 2840–2847 (2020)
Nan, F., Kolvenbach, H., Hutter, M.: A reconfigurable leg for walking robots. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. (2021)
Roozing, W., Li, Z., Medrano-Cerda, G.A., Caldwell, D.G., Tsagarakis, N.G.: Development and control of a compliant asymmetric antagonistic actuator for energy efficient mobility. IEEE/ASME Trans. Mechatron. 21(2), 1080–1091 (2015)
Seok, S., Wang, A., Chuah, M.Y., Hyun, D.J., Lee, J., Otten, D.M., Lang, J.H., Kim, S.: Design principles for energy-efficient legged locomotion and implementation on the MIT cheetah robot. IEEE/ASME Trans. Mechatron. 20(3), 1117–1129 (2015)
Tran, M., Gabert, L., Cempini, M., Lenzi, T.: A lightweight, efficient fully powered knee prosthesis with actively variable transmission. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 4(2), 1186–1193 (2019)
Tranzatto, M.: Cerberus: Autonomous legged and aerial robotic exploration in the tunnel and urban circuits of the darpa subterranean challenge. J. Field Robot. (2021)
Tsagarakis, N.G., Morfey, S., Dallali, H., Medrano-Cerda, G.A., Caldwell, D.G.: An asymmetric compliant antagonistic joint design for high performance mobility. In: 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 5512–5517. IEEE (2013)
Valsecchi, G., Rudin, N., Nachtigall, L., Mayer, K., Tischhauser, F., Hutter, M.: Barry: a high-payload and agile quadruped robot. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (2023 (Manuscript under review))
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by ESA Contract Number 4000131516/20/NL/MH/ic.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Valsecchi, G., Tischhauser, F., Junger, J., Bernarnd, Y., Hutter, M. (2024). Actively Variable Transmission Robotic Leg. In: Youssef, E.S.E., Tokhi, M.O., Silva, M.F., Rincon, L.M. (eds) Synergetic Cooperation between Robots and Humans. CLAWAR 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 811. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47272-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47272-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-47271-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-47272-5
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)