Controls and Control Theory Commons^™

Sprawl Angle In Simplified Models Of Vertical Climbing: Implications For Robots And Roaches, Goran A. Lynch, Lawrence Rome, Daniel E. Koditschek

Daniel E Koditschek

Empirical data taken from fast climbing sprawled posture animals reveals the presence of strong lateral forces with significant pendulous swaying of the mass center trajectory in a manner captured by a recently proposed dynamical template. In this simulation study we explore the potential benefits of pendulous dynamical climbing in animals and in robots by examining the stability and power advantages of variously more and less sprawled limb morphologies when driven by conventional motors in contrast with animal-like muscles. For open loop models of gait generation inspired by the neural-deprived regimes of high stride-frequency animal climbing, our results corroborate earlier hypotheses …