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November 06, 2018 06:53:40
Understanding the way in which they can use the key to building off-road robots for search and rescue, or even space missions.
So say Dr. Christofer Clemente from the University of the Sunshine Coast and Nicholas Wu from the University of Queensland.
The peer's latest research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, reviewed how they use their transition.
Dr. Clemente said that understanding would enable them to design a robot that could operate on their wheels, but could also be relied on to help them.
"A lot of wheeled robots are not very manoeuvrable." "It's one of the few advantages that legged robots have," he said.
"[They] can get over hurdles easily but are not very efficient [so] if we could get a wheeled robot and allow it to negotiate obstacles then what we've made is compromised between the two. "
Dr. Clemente said the greater a robot's ability to negotiate hurdles, or it could reach.
"If you're going to have a lot of things going on, you're going to be able to get around quickly and getting over obstacles, because time is of the essence," he said. said.
If successful, the technology could be used to create a dangerous, uninhabitable or uninhabitable field after natural disasters and could be used within the agricultural industry.
"If they can take a remote robot, it might be a way to go," he said, "it would be a completely robotic robot," Dr. Clemente said.
"But if we give it a little more obstacle negotiating ability then they can reach more places."
Recording lizard biomechanics and kinetics
According to Dr. Clemente, lizards are "extraordinary" creatures because of their ability to interchange between four legs to two – the same movement they want robots to do.
Dr. Clemente and Mr Wu studied eight species of lizards – both in their natural environment and in the laboratory – and recorded their biomechanics (the way they moved), as well as their kinetics (the force of which they push onto the ground).
For three years, they have been used to observe the reptiles moved quadrupedally (with four legs) and bipedally (with two legacies).
"What we found is that they have a few tricks up their sleeves," Dr. Clemente said.
"They sometimes do things like flick up their tail or move their arms back and that causes them to rise up on their back legs."
He said it was "neat" because it was previously thought that lizards were just going to crash.
"Like the way that you're riding a motorcycle or a wheelbarrow and you accelerate really quickly," Dr. Clemente explained.
"But what we showed was that they are actually trying to get back on their back legs."
Robots learning to cross a field
He said that they have had an understanding of the problems they have had in the past.
Mr Wu, a PhD candidate at UQ, said they also discovered a different difference in their lives, depending on their running style.
"When they're running, they're not going to be using their cornerstone," he said.
"But during bipedal running, it seems they're using their tails towards stabilization."
Mr Wu said that it would be a good idea to have robotic design because robots needed to understand how to cross a field.
"On flat ground, it's quite easy to calculate where to put your foot down but on a field, there's a lot of variables and it's very complex for robots to try to compute," he said.
"Most of the time these robots will fail in the field."
Is Mars the limit?
Getting a lizard to transition between quadrupedal and bipedal running is tricky, so with a $ 380,000 Australian Research Council Fellowship Discovery, the researchers built a four-wheeled robot, complete with a tail.
"We built it with the idea that it would drive along on four wheels, which is the same as running on four legs, but we could use it in the same way [themselves] up, "Dr. Clemente said.
He explained that the lizard-like movement of getting up on its back legs would be replicated by the robot going up on its back wheels.
The researchers are still in the early stages of experimentation Dr Clemente said the sky was the limit for a wheeled robot able to successfully negotiate obstacles.
"We'd love to send it to Mars but that's a far-fetched right now," he said.
The next phase of their research will focus on the reasons for the reptile's transition from four legs to two legacies.
topics:
robots-and-artificial-intelligence
science-and-technology,
reptiles,
animal-science
disasters-and-accidents,
sippy-downs-4556,
university-of-queensland-4072
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