Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 2 Summer 2018 | Page 11

The evolution of bipedal robots may
follow a road once traveled by living
species – the inclusion of a tail.
just like a human to keep it from falling.”
In the Robotics and Mechatronics Lab
of Pinhas Ben-Tzvi, associate professor of
mechanical engineering in the College of
Engineering, the tail has become a capti-
vating solution for the problem of bipedal
and quadrupedal robot stabilizing and
maneuvering. The problem is that with legs so com-
plex, they are large and very expensive,
requiring not only additional joints
and motors, but also complex control
algorithms and increased computational
load. With the addition of a robotic tail,
Ben-Tzvi believes the legs can get much
simpler, and the robot lighter, easier to
design, and less expensive.
“If you’ve seen robotic quadrupeds, they
are very big and very expensive, with
articulated legs incorporating multiple
degrees of freedom,” said Ben-Tzvi. “The
machines use the leg’s multiple degrees of
freedom to maneuver and stabilize so if
they are pushed from the side, the legs ad- “Instead of four leg mechanisms each
with multiple degrees of freedom and with
complicated controls, we can make the
legs with a single degree of freedom, and
one motor per leg that will allow the en-
tire mechanism to run forward, but really
fast,” explained Ben-Tzvi. “The legs take
MOMENTUM
SUMMER 2018
PAGE 11