Robotics has come a long way. Now robots are more advanced in many ways than ever before. Now a new six-legged robot runs faster than natural ones.
Innovators have tried to make robots that have a natural gait. However, a natural gait for robots has been found to be less efficient. Such gaits have been used by insects to move about. Insects though have adhesive pads on their feet that aid in their movement.
Researchers from EPFL and UNIL are looking into a new way that bio-inspired robots might move better. The researchers say that innovators should break from making robots move in a natural manner. The researchers are looking at a bipod gait instead to make bio-inspired robots move.
To study this new type of movement, researchers have run computer simulations as well as study robots. The researchers have also studied the insect Drosophila melanogaster. Pavan Ramdya, the study's co-author has said that they wanted to find out if a tripod way of locomotion can be an efficient way for six-legged robots to move.
An algorithm has been made to study different types of movements. Through the algorithm the researchers were able to find the fastest way a robot can move, according to EPFL's site. The algorithm has been able to show that a tripod gait is efficient if the feet have adhesive pads and can be used to climb walls.
However, the algorithm has been able to demonstrate that a bipod gait is more suitable for robots when ground walking without any adhesive on its feet. The researchers next made a six-legged robot that can either walk in a tripod or bipod gait. Through this, it has been shown that a bipod gait to be much faster as compared to a tripod gait, as Science Daily reports.
The adhesive pads on insect feet seem to help in their locomotion. When the researchers applied polymer drops on flies' legs, they used bipod movement. With robots that have no adhesive pads, a bipod movement would then work better. The study has shown that a six-legged robot moves faster than natural ones with a new way of locomotion. A large deposit of molten carbon has been discovered under western US.
