Using an inertial tail for rapid turns on a miniature legged robot

Abstract

Miniature legged robots have demonstrated fast locomotion at small sizes, but underactuation generally limits their performance in rapid turns and other dynamic maneuvers. In this work, the inertial effect of swinging a dynamic tail was studied as a method to achieve these rapid turns. An analytic model of a robot with a reaction wheel tail was developed to determine the effect of varying system parameters such as tail motor voltage, coefficient of friction, and tail inertia on inertial turning performance. This model was also validated experimentally using a modified off-the-shelf miniature legged robot. The same trends seen in the analytic study were also found in the experiments varying motor voltage, coefficient of friction, and tail inertia.