Dynamic Multimodal Locomotion: A Quick Overview of Hardware and Control

TL;DR

This paper reviews hardware and control strategies for dynamic multimodal bipedal locomotion, focusing on thruster-assisted stabilization, hardware design, simulation, and firmware development for robots like Harpy.

Contribution

It introduces a lightweight, robust hardware platform with thruster integration and demonstrates control algorithms through simulation and real hardware implementation.

Findings

Thruster-assisted walking improves stability on uneven terrain.

Hardware design balances lightweight construction with strength.

Simulation confirms effectiveness of thruster control in dynamic scenarios.

Abstract

Bipedal robots are a fascinating and advanced category of robots designed to mimic human form and locomotion. The development of the bipedal robots is a significant milestone in robotics. However, even the most advanced bipedal robots are susceptible to changes in terrain, obstacle negotiation, payload, and weight distribution, and the ability to recover after stumbles. These problems can be circumvented by introducing thrusters. Thrusters will allow the robot to stabilize on various uneven terrain. The robot can easily avoid obstacles and will be able to recover after stumbling. Harpy is a bipedal robot that has 6 joints and 2 thrusters and serves as a hardware platform for implementing advanced control algorithms. This thesis explores manufacturing harpy hardware such that the overall system can be lightweight and strong. Also, it goes through simulation results to show thruster-assisted walking, and at last, it shows firmware and communication network development which is implemented on actual hardware. vii