Terrestrial Locomotion of PogoX: From Hardware Design to Energy Shaping and Step-to-step Dynamics Based Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces PogoX, a hybrid aerial-terrestrial robot with a spring-loaded leg, capable of hopping on the ground with low thrust-to-weight ratio, using energy shaping and step-to-step dynamics control.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid robot design and a control framework enabling terrestrial hopping for aerial vehicles with heavy loads.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated hopping at TWR < 1

Robust to ground height variations

Capable of variable hop heights and velocities

Abstract

We present a novel controller design on a robotic locomotor that combines an aerial vehicle with a spring-loaded leg. The main motivation is to enable the terrestrial locomotion capability on aerial vehicles so that they can carry heavy loads: heavy enough that flying is no longer possible, e.g., when the thrust-to-weight ratio (TWR) is small. The robot is designed with a pogo-stick leg and a quadrotor, and thus it is named as PogoX. We show that with a simple and lightweight spring-loaded leg, the robot is capable of hopping with TWR $<1$. The control of hopping is realized via two components: a vertical height control via control Lyapunov function-based energy shaping, and a step-to-step (S2S) dynamics based horizontal velocity control that is inspired by the hopping of the Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP). The controller is successfully realized on the physical robot, showing dynamic terrestrial locomotion of PogoX which can hop at variable heights and different horizontal velocities with robustness to ground height variations and external pushes.