In this study, our aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of thruster-assisted steep slope walking for the Husky Carbon, a quadrupedal robot equipped with custom-designed actuators and plural electric ducted fans, through simulation prior to conducting experimental trials. Thruster-assisted steep slope walking draws inspiration from wing-assisted incline running (WAIR) observed in birds, and intriguingly incorporates posture manipulation and thrust vectoring, a locomotion technique not previously explored in the animal kingdom. Our approach involves developing a reduced-order model of the Husky robot, followed by the application of an optimization-based controller utilizing collocation methods and dynamics interpolation to determine control actions. Through simulation testing, we demonstrate the feasibility of hardware implementation of our controller.
@article{arxiv.2406.13118,
title = {Thruster-Assisted Incline Walking},
author = {Kaushik Venkatesh Krishnamurthy and Chenghao Wang and Shreyansh Pitroda and Adarsh Salagame and Eric Sihite and Reza Nemovi and Alireza Ramezani and Morteza Gharib},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.13118},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
7 pages, 7 figures, submitted to CDC 2024 conference. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2405.06070