Verification of a hypothesis that quadrupedal gait patterns vary according to the posture

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K11489
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 61050:Intelligent robotics-related
• Research Institution: Ibaraki University
• Principal Investigator: Fukuoka Yasuhiro 茨城大学, 理工学研究科(工学野), 准教授 (40418679)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 歩行走行ロボット

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Our aim is to make our hypothesis strong that walking and running gait patterns are triggered by the body posture (body oscillation) that changes according to the speed. To do this, we use our new quadruped robot with more realistic mechanisms and neural system models, similar to an animal and allow the robot to generate walking and running gait patterns. We first demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed realistic nervous system by using a quadruped simulation model. Next, we applied the nervous system to a cat-like quadruped robot with more realistic mechanism driven by artificial muscle actuators and succeeded in demonstrating gait generation between walking, troting, and galloping on the robot, which are observed on an animal. These results should boost our hypothesis.

Free Research Field

ロボット工学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

4足動物は速度に応じて異なる複数の歩行走行パターン(4脚の動かし方)を使い分けている．その結果エネルギー効率が最良になることはNature, Scienceを筆頭に多く報告されてきたが，各パターンの発生原理については多分野での多くの試みにも関わらず未だに不明である．我々は4脚ロボットを用いて，walk-trot-gallopの歩行走行パターン遷移を実現し，その結果に基づいて，我々は，速度に応じて変わる胴体振動に対して歩行走行を安定に保つためにそれらのパターンを変化させていると仮説を立てている．これは一般の生物学で言われる知見とは異なるものであり，新しい主張して価値があると考えている．