PROGRAMMING LEGGED ROBOTS
Dr . Akbari Hamed and his research team in Hybrid Dynamic Systems and Robot Locomotion Laboratory ( HDSRL ) are working to develop intelligent and distributed control algorithms for collaborative legged robots to cooperatively work with each other and people to achieve a variety of tasks in complex environments .
This problem is motivated by collective phenomena in biology . Social ants collaboratively work with each other to transport large payloads that can be hundreds or even thousands of times the weight of an individual ant . More than half of the Earth ’ s landmass is unreachable to wheeled vehicles - this motivates the deployment of ubiquitous legged robots to enable the accessibility of these environments and thus bring robots into the real world .
Although important theoretical and technological advances have allowed the development of distributed controllers for complex robot systems , existing approaches are tailored to the modeling and control of multiagent systems composed of collaborative robotic arms , multifingered robot hands , aerial vehicles , and ground vehicles , but not collaborative legged agents . Legged robots are inherently unstable , as opposed to most of the systems where these algorithms have been deployed .
The team has developed a formal foundation to synthesize distributed controllers for teams of legged robots , based on convex optimization and advanced nonlinear control theory . The team is collaborating with Caltech and the project is supported by the National Science Foundation ( NSF ). Dr . Akbari Hamed has also delivered a TEDx talk on the deployment of the next generation of collaborative legged robots that will save our future cities .
Kaveh Akbari Hamed
Assistant Professor
VIRGINIA TECH MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ANNUAL REPORT • 2019-2020 • RESEARCH 27