Research Projects

The locomotion for uneven terrains is a challenge that several researchers are focussing on. The wheeled and legged robotic locomotion are the most common forms of mechanisms conventionally adopted to rapidly transit through the uneven terrains. While wheeled motion is the best suited for swiftly moving through the planar surfaces, the legged motion is often recommended to manoeuvre through the uneven terrain. The quadruped robots have been the state of the art in legged robots. However, the biggest drawback in the legged configuration is the lack of agility that is remarkable in wheeled robots. However, the irregular terrain hinders the nimble locomotion that can be achieved using legged robots. The possibility of achieving both swift and agile locomotion through regular and irregular terrains accentuates for a hybrid architecture of using both wheeled and legged architecture for the robot’s locomotion. The primary focus of the present research is to develop a compact and novel assistive social robot for elderly support both indoor and outdoor. A human assisting robot must have the capability to locomote through the confined spaces as humans do and be able to carry a given payload. Moreover, the assisting robot also must balance itself in the presence of an external payload. The productivity of the assisting robot will be further enhanced by infusing the capability to hop, in addition to self-balancing on wheels. In order to realize a human assisting robot, a single legged robot is perceived that has the capability to not only balance on the regular surfaces but also hop over the obstacles while preserving the stability. A single legged robot would be the most compact form of the assisting robot; however, the following challenges have to be solved. 1) The classic problem of obtaining self-balancing of a double inverted pendulum in an under-actuated configuration needs to be addressed. 2) Designing a closed loop control system for the gait generation for hopping has to be addressed. 3) The ability to switch between the hopping and rolling has to be facilitated. 4) The payload carrying capacity has to be instilled into the design of the robot. The above four challenges will be investigated in this research while designing a compact robot that has a hybrid locomotion of both inverted pendulum on wheels and the ability to hop. In view of the above, the assistive robot being developed in this research is called as Hip-Hop Robot. The design of the Hip-hop robot has been initiated in a discrete approach. Designing of the inverted pendulum robot and the hopping robot are investigated separately. The controller schemes are implemented for inverted pendulum underactuated configurations. It is observed that the development of the hybrid inverted pendulum and hopping robot has the potential that combines the benefits of having both wheels and legs to navigate through difficult and complex terrains.