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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Atlanta, GA | Posted: December 7, 2018
Summary Sentence:
Biologically Inspired Locomotion in Autonomous Robots
Full Summary:
Biologically Inspired Locomotion in Autonomous Robots
Alex ChangThrough their bio-inspired morphology and motion strategies, snake-like robots strive to appropriate locomotive versatilities similar to those observed in their biological counterpart. In particular, these mechanisms are advantaged in a variety of challenging locomotive scenarios for which traditionally wheeled or tracked platforms are often denied access or must operate in a degraded fashion. Tools and methods supporting practical locomotion and control of snake-like robots, however, remain scarce. We develop a shape-centric continuous body model of three distinctly advantaged gaits: traveling wave rectilinear motion, lateral undulation and sidewinding. Through repeated numerical simulation of each gait's dynamics, empirical characterizations of averaged steady-behavior body velocity are obtained, with respect to each gait's parameter space. This control-to-action map simplifies a complex dynamical system to a differential drive-like kinematic model where system motion is dictated by a set of intuitive, geometrically-oriented gait parameters. The control-to-action map is applied to pivotally inform optimal trajectory synthesis as well as follow-on feedback trajectory tracking in order to traverse arbitrary obstacle scenarios. The planning and control framework for each gait then serves as a foundation for higher-level locomotive planning, whereby navigation may additionally consider employing mixtures of gaits to accomplish locomotive objectives.
