An approach to enable both locomotion and manipulation in a snake-inspired robot

Snake-inspired robots might have varied benefits over typical wheeled or legged robots. As an example, slithering robots can adapt the form of their physique, enter slim areas, and transfer freely in environments which are inaccessible to each people and different robots.

In distinction with many wheeled and legged robots, nonetheless, most snake-like robots can not choose up and manipulate objects. This considerably limits their real-world applications, because it prevents them from finishing duties that entail extra superior interactions with their environment.

A analysis group at Northeastern University’s Silicon Synapse Lab supervised by Prof. Alireza Ramezani just lately launched a brand new strategy that might permit snake-like robots to maneuver and manipulate objects concurrently. This strategy, launched in a paper pre-published on arXiv, was initially carried out on COBRA, a robotic platform developed by a gaggle of scholars at Northeastern as a part of the BIG Concept Competitions.

“We’ve been developing the snake robot COBRA for almost three years,” Adarsh Salagame, Ph.D. scholar at Northwestern University, advised Tech Xplore. “This challenge began out as a method of exploring various locomotion capabilities.

“Differently from standard wheeled or legged robots, snake robots typically exhibit versatile locomotion capabilities, as they can really morph into different shapes and one can control what parts of the body are in contact with the ground. This entails the more precise regulation of contact forces compared to wheeled or legged robots, which only have specific body parts touching the ground.”

By efficiently permitting the COBRA robotic to morph into completely different shapes, Salagame and his colleagues had been capable of broaden its locomotion expertise, demonstrating 5 several types of locomotion types. Subsequently, in addition they began exploring the potential of enhancing the robotic’s object manipulation expertise.

“To make the COBRA robot even more functional and versatile, expanding its applications to areas beyond those tackled by traditional robots, we came upon this idea of object loco-manipulation, which entails locomotion and manipulation together,” Salagame mentioned. “That’s what we achieved with COBRA.”

The COBRA robotic has a gripper mechanism built-in in its head, which is designed to help the robotic throughout a selected locomotion mode, often called tumbling. Whereas the robotic is tumbling, its head and tail latch collectively to type a wheel-like construction, thus permitting it to passively roll down a slope at excessive speeds.

“We repurposed the robot’s gripper to latch into a box instead and to pick it up and move it to a different location,” Salagame mentioned. “This gives us the ability to both dexterously manipulate a box and move around in confined spaces, slopes or areas where standard robots would not be able to operate.”

To comprehend their proposed loco-manipulation strategy, Salagame and his colleagues developed an optimization-based planner that considers floor response forces to plan each the robotic’s actions and object manipulation methods. Of their latest paper, the researchers examined this planner and demonstrated its feasibility.

“We first tested this approach by studying open-loop behavior on the real robot,” Salagame mentioned. “The next step will be to implement this closed-loop in simulation and then eventually on the real robot. But what this study showed us is that our approach is feasible. The task we are tackling is not trivial, as when you have such a large number of contacts with the ground, you have a lot of slippage and compliance in the joints, which leads to many errors.”

The latest examine by this analysis group demonstrates the feasibility of tackling locomotion and manipulation concurrently in snake-inspired robots. To date, the researchers have used their strategy to check the interplay of the COBRA robotic with each the bottom and a field. Sooner or later, Salagame and his collaborators plan to additional take a look at their strategy on extra versatile loco-manipulation duties.

“We are adding a sensor suite on board of COBRA with a camera and an IMU, and we want to tackle more autonomous locomotion tasks using the robot’s sidewinding movements,” Salagame added. “That is an thrilling new side that has hardly ever been noticed in robots. Utilizing that morphing functionality to vary the inertia properties of the robotic and alter the path of tumbling.

“We will also use the camera to tackle closed-loop object manipulation, allowing the robot to identify the box, pick it up and move it to different locations, thus potentially tackling interesting tasks that involve high-level planning.”

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