Energy-based and biomimetic robotics

Abstract

PropositionsAccompanying PhD thesis "Energy-based and biomimetic robotics."1. Spineless biomimetic cheetah robots are a slight to nature. 2.A geometry-based look at synchronisation allows defining synchronicity and phase difference of arbitrary periodic systems. 3.The dynamic effect of a running cheetah's spine can be represented well by a single compliant element. 4.It is a welcome change to have a working prototype but no idea how it works, rather than a good theory but no functional prototype. 5.A new cost function should be introduced in optimal control:Since it takes the maximum over squared terms, people may finally talk about the "most optimal" solution without reprisal. 6.A good PhD thesis does not only report and document, but also teach and entertain. 7.If universities were serious about their education duty, they would find ways to value, stimulate and reward good teaching.8. "Defence" is not a synonym of "stage play"-having worked on their topic for four years, the PhD candidate should be given the proverbial third degree. 9.Trying to keep track of the state of the world through the news is futile: by definition, news is high-pass filtered; state reconstruction is subject to severe integration errors. 10.Nothing beats enharmonic humor, the intersection of puns and music. That's why you visit an optician when you don't D . This thesis was typeset with L A T E X; most images generated with the TikZ/pgf and pgfplots packages; it was maintained in a git/GitLab repository. And I bet you, dear, a penny, You say mani-(fold) like many, Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier, Tier (one who ties), but tier. -dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité,"The Chaos" (excerpt) SummaryThe cheetah is a truly wondrous beast: to catch its prey it hunts them down at speed and runs at sixty km-h at least! A stunning figure-nature's best, indeed.A legged robot has not yet come close. They stumble at a low velocity, or if one ever to the same speed rose, its lack of grace was an atrocity.For cheetah's high performing gaits we yearn, to be so fast, efficient, full of grace. From nature therefore we must try to learn, to reap from evolution's high-speed race.This plan makes sense, the logic sounds so smart! The only problem is now: where to start?The world around us runs on energy: the "lingua franca" 'cross domains of sorts. So E in this work features centrally and interactions go through power ports.This holds not solely for the physical, the presentation of the real-life thing, but also E is used for virtual: describing algorithms, like a spring.Control of port behaviour is the key. The flow and effort, always as a pair, determine interaction properly, as introduced by Hamilton of Éire.This holistic view sounds splendid; yet will this give us a working robot pet?VII A running cheetah's butt goes down and upthat is to say: the shoulder and the hip. So, looking at the motion in close-up, two hoppers are the legs that jump and skip.To replicate this with efficiency, in resonance-based running like a boss, avoiding energy-deficiency, we have to mini...

Design of galloping robots with elastic spine: tracking relations between dynamic model parameters based on motion analysis of a real cheetah

“…The spine is modeled as a geometric spring parameterized by a center of compliance [14], where the spring locally behaves as a decoupled rotational stiffness k z and translational stiffness K t = k x 0 0 k y . The spine wrench is applied in frame Ψ s r and Ψ s f as a function of H s f s r W s,s r s (H…”

Study on Elastic Elements Allocation for Energy-Efficient Robotic Cheetah Leg

“…This paper is mostly inspired by the robotic cheetah project at the University of Twente [7], [8]. The original task was to create a leg mechanism for a cheetah robot, which is able to run with the least amount of control.…”