Impact-resistant, autonomous robots inspired by tensegrity architecture

TL;DR

This paper presents a tensegrity-inspired robot combining compliance and autonomy, demonstrating impact resistance, shape reconstruction, high-speed locomotion, and climbing ability in challenging environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel tensegrity robot that integrates rigid and elastic components, enhancing resilience and autonomous operation in complex terrains.

Findings

Survives drops from at least 5.7 meters

Achieves 18 bar lengths per minute in locomotion

Climbs slopes up to 28 degrees

Abstract

Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities expected of rigid robots. Inspired by tensegrity architecture, we introduce a tensegrity robot -- a hybrid robot made from rigid struts and elastic tendons -- that demonstrates the advantages of compliance and the autonomy necessary for task performance. This robot boasts impact resistance and autonomy in a field environment and additional advances in the state of the art, including surviving harsh impacts from drops (at least 5.7 m), accurately reconstructing its shape and orientation using on-board sensors, achieving high locomotion speeds (18 bar lengths per minute), and climbing the steepest incline of any tensegrity robot (28 degrees). We characterize the robot's locomotion on unstructured terrain, showcase its autonomous capabilities in navigation tasks, and demonstrate its robustness by rolling it off a cliff.