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Abstract Research in quadrupedal robotics is transitioning to studies into loco-manipulation, featuring fully articulated robotic arms mounted atop these robots. Integrating such arms enhances the practical utility of legged robots, paving the way for expanded applications like industrial inspection and search and rescue. Existing literature commonly employs a six-degree-of-freedom (six-DoF) arm directly mounted to the robot, which inherently adds significant weight and reduces the available payload for manipulation tasks. Our study explores an optimized combination of arm configuration and control framework by strategically reducing the DoFs and leveraging the quadruped robot’s inherent agile mobility. We demonstrate that by minimizing the DoFs to just one, a range of canonical loco-manipulation tasks can still be accomplished. Some tasks even show improved performance with fewer robotic arm DoFs due to the higher torque motor used in the design, allowing more of the robot’s payload to be used for manipulation. We designed our optimized one-DoF robotic arm and the control framework and tested it on top of a Unitree Aliengo. Our design outperforms conventional six-DoF counterparts in lifting capacity, achieving an impressive 8 kg payload compared to the 2 kg maximum payload of industry-standard six-DoF robotic arms on the same quadruped platform.
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Spacecraft-Mounted Robotics
Space-mounted robotics is becoming increasingly mainstream for many space missions. The aim of this article is threefold: first, to give a broad and quick overview of the importance of spacecraft-mounted robotics for future in-orbit servicing missions; second, to review the basic current approaches for modeling and control of spacecraft-mounted robotic systems; and third, to introduce some new developments in terms of modeling and control of spacecraft-mounted robotic manipulators using the language of hypercomplex numbers (dual quaternions). Some outstanding research questions and potential future directions in the field are also discussed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2101250
- PAR ID:
- 10471878
- Publisher / Repository:
- Annual Reviews
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2573-5144
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 335 to 362
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- robotics manipulators in-orbit servicing control trajectory tracking dual quaternions dynamics kinematics
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-control-062122-082114
