A Robust Quadruped Robot with Twisting Waist for Flexible Motions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cost-effective waist mechanism for quadruped robots, enhancing their agility and flexibility, and proposes a GAIL-based control method validated through extensive simulation and real-world tests.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel waist mechanism integrated into an open-source quadruped robot and a full-body control method based on GAIL for improved maneuverability.

Findings

Enhanced steering and terrain adaptability demonstrated in tests.

The waist mechanism improves robot flexibility and robustness.

Control algorithm outperforms previous methods in various gaits.

Abstract

The waist plays a crucial role in the agile movement of many animals in nature. It provides the torso with additional degrees of freedom and flexibility, inspiring researchers to incorporate this biological feature into robotic structures to enhance robot locomotion. This paper presents a cost-effective and low-complexity waist mechanism integrated into the structure of the open-source robot solo8, adding a new degree of freedom (DOF) to its torso. We refer to this novel robot as solo9. Additionally, we propose a full-body control method for the waist-equipped quadruped robot based on generative adversarial imitation learning (GAIL). During training, the discriminator is used as input for iterative optimization of the policy and dataset, enabling solo9 to achieve flexible steering maneuvers across various gaits. Extensive tests of solo9's steering capabilities, terrain adaptability, and robustness are conducted in both simulation and real-world scenarios, with detailed comparisons to solo8 and solo12, demonstrating the effectiveness of the control algorithm and the advantages of the waist mechanism.