AQUA: An Amphibious Autonomous Robot

Dudek, Gregory; Giguère, Philippe; Prahacs, Chris; Saunderson, Shane; Sattar, Junaed; Torres-Méndez, L. Abril; Jenkin, Michael; German, A.; Hogue, Andrew; Ripsman, A.; Zacher, James E.; Milios, Evangelos; Liu, Hui; Zhang, Pifu; Buehler, M.; Georgiades, Christina

doi:10.1109/mc.2007.6

Cited by 213 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The Aqua class robots are heavier because of the casing designed to sustain high pressures at depths about 30 meters under water [3]. These amphihex-legs have a limitation on the strength of the legs to support the weight of a heavy robot like Aqua class robots.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As mentioned earlier, the robot used for the experiments [3] is a hexapod amphibious robot which is capable of walking on rough terrain, swimming on the water surface and deep underwater swimming. There are many types of legs designed to aid the robot with varied kinds of locomotion: a semi-circular tractable legs to walk on rough and smooth terrains, flippers to achieve 5DOF trajectories underwater, ninja legs to aid both the walking and swimming maneuvers.…”

Section: A Description Of the Aqua Robot And Its Legsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our design is targeted to the Aqua hexapod vehicle that uses a RHex-based body design [2] to walk on land, but which is also capable of swimming [3]. One of the important characteristics of this class of vehicles is the open-loop walking using simple legs that are free of internal actuators or moving parts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ninja legs: Amphibious one degree of freedom robotic legs

Dey

Manjanna

Dudek

2013

2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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Abstract-In this paper we propose a design of a class of robotic legs (known as "Ninja legs") that enable amphibious operation, both walking and swimming, for use on a class of hexapod robots. Amphibious legs equip the robot with a capability to explore diverse locations in the world encompassing both those that are on the ground as well as underwater. In this paper we work with a hexapod robot of the Aqua vehicle family (based on a body plan first developed by Buehler et al. [1]), which is an amphibious robot that employs legs for amphibious locomotion. Many different leg designs have been previously developed for Aqua-class vehicles, including both robust all-terrain legs for walking, and efficient flippers for swimming. But the walking legs have extremely poor thrust for swimming and the flippers are completely unsuitable for terrestrial operations. In this work we propose a single leg design with the advantages of both the walking legs and the swimming flippers. We design a cage-like circular enclosure for the flippers in order to protect the flippers during terrestrial operations. The enclosing structure also plays the role of the walking legs for terrestrial locomotion. The circular shape of the enclosure, as well, has the advantages of an offset wheel. We evaluate the performance of our design for terrestrial mobility by comparing the power efficiency and the physical speed of the robot equipped with the newly designed legs against that with the walking legs which are semi-circular in shape. The swimming performance is examined by measuring the thrust generated by newly designed legs and comparing the same with the thrust generated by the swimming flippers. In the field, we also verified that these legs are suitable for swimming through moderate surf, walking through the breakers on a beach (and thus through slurry), and onto wet and dry sand.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Description Of the Aqua Robot And Its Legsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ninja legs: Amphibious one degree of freedom robotic legs

Dey

Manjanna

Dudek

2013

2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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“…The robot must be able to move from a launch/release point and submerging, to pass through a 3x4 meter validation gate, to locate a cross situated on the bottom of the pool and dropping a marker over it and to locate a midwater target and contracting it with the AUV. Other AUV as AQUA [9] and Madeleine [10] are examples of robots which do not use propellers as propulsion. AQUA uses paddles whereas Madeleine uses webbed legs which are feeding with a mechanism of 2 DoF.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental determination of the hydrofoil's angle of attack in the case of a turtle-like Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Font¹,

Tresánchez²,

Siegentahler³

et al. 2011

OCEANS 2011 IEEE - Spain

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Abstract-In this paper a turtle's hydrofoil 2 DoF's mechanism (degrees of freedom) is implemented and tested in a water channel as a propulsion system for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). The experiments carried out showed an optimal empirical value of the angle of attack for the turtle's hydrofoil that is compared with the theoretical value. The hydrofoil path used in the tests was a linear displacement and the optimization of this path will be analyzed in future works.

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“…1, that has the potential to operate autonomously and in conjunction with stationary sensors. Our vehicle has passed through several design and re-design cycles [1], [2], [3], [4] and it has been tested in a variety of environments. Moreover, the mechanical design, the implementation of basic sensing capabilities, and the development of basic behaviours have undergone significant change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enabling autonomous capabilities in underwater robotics

Sattar

Dudek

Chiu

et al. 2008

2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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Abstract-Underwater operations present unique challenges and opportunities for robotic applications. These can be attributed in part to limited sensing capabilities, and to locomotion behaviours requiring control schemes adapted to specific tasks or changes in the environment. From enhancing teleoperation procedures, to providing high-level instruction, all the way to fully autonomous operations, enabling autonomous capabilities is fundamental for the successful deployment of underwater robots. This paper presents an overview of the approaches used during underwater sea trials in the coral reefs of Barbados, for two amphibious mobile robots and a set of underwater sensor nodes. We present control mechanisms used for maintaining a preset trajectory during enhanced teleoperations and discuss their experimental results. This is followed by a discussion on amphibious data gathering experiments conducted on the beach. We then present a tetherless underwater communication approach based on pure vision for high-level control of an underwater vehicle. Finally the construction details together with preliminary results from a set of distributed underwater sensor nodes are outlined.

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AQUA: An Amphibious Autonomous Robot

Cited by 213 publications

References 6 publications

Ninja legs: Amphibious one degree of freedom robotic legs

Ninja legs: Amphibious one degree of freedom robotic legs

Experimental determination of the hydrofoil's angle of attack in the case of a turtle-like Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Enabling autonomous capabilities in underwater robotics

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