Vibration of Soft, Twisted Beams for Under-Actuated Quadrupedal Locomotion

TL;DR

This paper introduces Flix-Walker, a small quadrupedal robot that uses vibrating helix-shaped legs actuated by two motors to achieve multiple mobility modes, with analysis and experiments demonstrating robust, self-navigating locomotion.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel vibration-based actuation method for soft, compliant quadrupedal robots, enabling multi-mode locomotion with minimal actuation complexity.

Findings

Vibrations from two motors can reliably produce multiple locomotion modes.

The proposed control parameters enable robust trajectory tracking.

Experimental results confirm effective self-navigation capabilities.

Abstract

Under-actuated compliant robotic systems offer a promising approach to mitigating actuation and control challenges by harnessing pre-designed, embodied dynamic behaviors. This paper presents Flix-Walker, a novel, untethered, centimeter-scale quadrupedal robot inspired by compliant under-actuated mechanisms. Flix-Walker employs flexible, helix-shaped beams as legs, which are actuated by vibrations from just two motors to achieve three distinct mobility modes. We analyze the actuation parameters required to generate various locomotion modes through both simulation and prototype experiments. The effects of system and environmental variations on locomotion performance are examined, and we propose a generic metric for selecting control parameters that produce robust and functional motions. Experiments validate the effectiveness and robustness of these actuation parameters within a closed-loop control framework, demonstrating reliable trajectory-tracking and self-navigation capabilities.