Researchers from the école polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Biorob facility have developed a catlike robot that mimics feline movement and is the fastest in its category.
The four-legged robot, dubbed the "Cheetah-cub robot," is approximately the same size as a housecat. The team of scientists painstakingly attempted to recreate a biological housecat's physiology. Instead of tendons, springs were used, and instead of muscles, actuators, motors that convert energy into movement, were implemented. The Cheetah-cub robot's legs are even divided into three sections proportionally the same to each other as a real cat's.
"This morphology gives the robot the mechanical properties from which cats benefit, that's to say a marked running ability and elasticity in the right spots, to ensure stability," explained Alexander Sprowitz, a Biorob scientist. "The robot is thus naturally more autonomous."
The Cheetah-cub is able to traverse a varied terrain and a high sustained speed - up to 1.4 meters per second, or seven body lengths per second. This makes it the fastest in the category for normalized speed for small quadruped robots under 66 pounds.
Legged robots offer distinct advantages over robots dependent on wheels or tracks since they can traverse a wider variety of terrain. The EPFL team hopes that the Cheetah-cub can demonstrate the viability of biomechanically reproducing advantages nature has already researched and fostered. The Cheetah-cub can clear obstacles of up to 20 percent its leg length.
Eventually, the scientists hope that the Cheetah-cub can play a role in exploration and search-and-rescue missions due to its mobility.
"It's still in the experimental stages, but the long-term goal of the Cheetah-cub robot is to be able to develop fast, agile, ground-hugging machines for use in exploration, for example for search and rescue in natural disaster situations," Biorob director Auke Ijspeert said. "Studying and using the principles of the animal kingdom to develop new solutions for use in robots is the essence of our research."
You can read the full published study detailing the Cheetah-Cub at The International Journal of Robotics Research.
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