Control of Crab-like robots for amphibious terrain
Abstract
Current autonomous robots can perform valuable Navy missions on land or in water, but transitioning between water and land requires crossing the challenging terrain in surf zones. Sand can trap wheels, rocks can be insurmountable obstacles, and waves can overturn robots. These same features are leveraged by crabs for stealthy and efficient movement. Inspired bycrabs, I propose to develop Compliant-legged Robots for Amphibious Behaviors in Surf Zones (CRABS) to expand the reachable map for terrestrial and marine robots. My hypothesis is that a key to robust amphibious legged locomotion in surf-zones is in controlling the legs to grasp the ground. Previously crabs have been described as buoyant runners, but here we propose that understanding them as walking graspers will allow better responses to waves. Building on my previous work in climbing robots, we propose to apply Distributed Inward Gripping (DIG) to apply shear forces to anchor the robot to the ground.Because the anchoring is not limited by the robot weight, the robots can be lighter (and thus more easily deployed by flying drones, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) or special forces. Our approach to developing these walking graspers will be to design control strategies for our existing waterproof crab robots and new robots being developed by a pending SERDP SEED proposal. The goal is to develop semi-autonomous robots with efficient autonomous walking gaits (aim 1) and intuitive user interfaces for mapping hand gestures to specific leg motions (aim 2). These technical approaches will rely on simulation of sandy and rocky terrains, validation on robotic test beds, exploration of reduced actuation, and user finger motion capture for control. If granted a third year, a final robot will be redesigned based on results from first two years.The anticipated outcome is robotic strategies to use waves, rocks and sand for stealthy, efficient locomotion to move from a sea bed to dry land and vice versa. With these goals and the hardware and software platforms, I have listed several low-cost optional feasibility and extension projects for unpaid undergraduates who often volunteer for senior projects in my lab. Another optional international collaboration is proposed for control with an unobtrusive arm band. Theseare included to show that this project has potential to launch long term research at my institution in the science of amphibious robots at various scales, the art of biologically-inspired control, and applied models and tools for Marine Ecology and Biology. Impact: Such a robot would help the Department of the Navy increase its already strong presence in critical coastal zones, permit surveillance and reconnaissance of beach hazards and obstacles, support missions in denied or contested areas, and facilitate rapid retrieval or repair ofoverboard objects. Such a crab-like robot could be deployed and recovered from a USV/UUV to reconnoiter a surf zone or beach with cameras or other sensors, seek and retrieve a particular object, or could be scaled-up for unobtrusive beach-to-ship deliveries, even in stormy weather. By performing pre-amphibious assault reconnaissance with unmanned vehicles, the U.S. Navy could potentially free-up valuable reconnaissance and special forces assets who would otherwise perform these tasks.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 25, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912138
Entities
People
- Kathryn A Daltorio
Organizations
- Case Western Reserve University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy