School of Mechanical Engineering Zaitsev Valentin
School of Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Monday, October 23, 2017 at 14:00
Wolfson Building of Mechanical Engineering, Room 206
Locust-Inspired Miniature Jumping Robot
Valentin Zaitsev
M.Sc student under the supervision of Dr. Uri Ben Hanan and Dr. Amiram Moshaiov (since the absence of Dr. Gabor Kosa). This research was carried out in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University and in the Mechanical Engineering department at Ort Braude College.
Unmanned ground vehicles are mostly wheeled, tracked, or legged. These locomotion mechanisms have limited abilities to traverse rough terrain and obstacles that are higher than the robot’s center of mass. In order to improve the mobility of small robots it has been suggested to provide them with jumping capabilities.
Jumping is one of nature’s solutions to the challenge of mobility in difficult terrain. As such, jumping serves as a bio-inspired locomotion alternative, and in particular for small-scale robots that need to overcome obstacles and traverse rough terrains. The desert locust is the model for the presented bio-inspired design of a jumping mechanism for a small mobile robot. The suggested mechanism is inspired by the semilunar process in the large hind pair of legs of the locust, which is a tiny spring-like elastic cuticle that stores energy by bending. The mechanism is based on the cocking of a torsional spring by wrapping a tendon-like wire around the shaft of a miniature motor.
This study includes both the conceptual and detailed design of the suggested locust-inspired jumping mechanism for robotic applications. In addition to presenting the design and manufacturing of the suggested mechanism, and reporting on the experimental results, this study includes modeling, simulations and performance analysis of two demonstrator prototypes.
The most advanced jumping robot demonstrator, designated TAUB, carries its own power source, weighs , and is capable of jumping to a height of , covering a distance of , outperforming other existing robots in its size-scale.
This research was carried out in the School of Mechanical Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Uri Ben Hanan and Dr. Amiram Moshaiov (since the absence of Dr. Gabor Kosa)
