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PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
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SUMMARY:Legged Locomotion with Spinal Undulations
DTSTART:20130111T170000
DTEND:20130111T174500
DTSTAMP:20260509T054354Z
UID:dce0a9baba9dfde28f871b2023a81f6096decdcec0a6485faeefcf5d
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Konstantinos Karakasiliotis \nLegged locomotion with spinal u
 ndulations is a topic that has not received much attention yet in robotics
 \, though\, vertebrates depend on both their limbs and spine to move effic
 iently in their environments. In this thesis\, my aim is to get more insig
 hts in the role and function of these two body parts as well as their coor
 dination. Biology provides several answers to these questions. Salamanders
  and lizards are great biological paradigms for studying animal locomotion
  with limbs and flexible spine. Not only do they have a highly flexible sp
 ine and limbs that can sometimes vary in strength or even number\, but the
 y also demonstrate a rich repertoire of locomotor modes. They can walk on 
 land\, while they can swim and walk in water. This provides many more exam
 ples on the ways that limbs and spine function and coordinate. Biorobotics
  is a growing field of robotics that aims at answering questions that cann
 ot be answered from animal observations. Those questions often deal with t
 he development of a specific function of a body part. In my studies\, I in
 itially used a bio-inspired amphibious salamander-like robot Salamandra ro
 botica II to extract basic principles of salamander locomotion. Although t
 he improvements of the limb and tail designs enhanced the robot’s perfor
 mance to a level that was surprisingly close to salamander’s\, several l
 imitations were identified owing to the simplicity of the bio-inspired des
 ign. These limitations motivated me to design a new amphibious salamander-
 like robot\, Pleurobot\, which is capable of replicating the movements of 
 salamanders in a reasonable accuracy. A novel methodology was also used du
 ring this process which proved to be effective but simple at the same time
 . Three dimensional kinematics of the salamander’s skeleton were recorde
 d and used to guide the design process and optimization of the robot’s m
 orphology and joints’ topology. The raw angular kinematics\, extracted f
 rom X-ray bi-planar videos of salamanders\, were then used to drive the jo
 ints of Pleurobot\, resulting in natural-looking and effective locomotion.
  The main contributions of this thesis are two-fold: i) biological data an
 d robotic prototypes that improve our understanding on sprawling locomotio
 n and ii) a successful methodology for robotic design for more animal-like
  robots and agile control.
LOCATION:INM202
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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