The efficacy of the neck and tail of miniature dinosaur-like robot TITRUS-III

Abstract

In this paper the fundamental concepts of the dinosaur-like robot called TITRUS and the mechanism design of the miniature prototype robot TITRUS-III are explained. TITRUS is based on the concept to realize a practical mobile working platform. ne explanation addresses its availability with two physical models: a particle system and a rigid body system The features of TITRUS are (1) realizing high dynamic stability by using a neck and a tail as an active dumper when the robot walks, (2) standing with the tail to compose a stable supporting triangle so that the robot can work stably and (3) enabling it to do various tasks by applying a manipulator to the neck. Finally, the fundamental walking experiments to examine usability of the neck and tail on TITRUS-III are reported.