| Currently there is no robotic solution that surpasses the grace, capabilities, and speed of mammalian legged locomotion. Underlying an ability to analyze and synthesizes this motion is the challenge of efficiently overcoming the discontinuous dynamics, without constraining the agility, of dynamic legged locomotion.; Recent strides in biology and robotics have shed new light on the governing principles underlying this motion. The dynamics are central to modeling and driving the legged motion. Consideration of these principles has lead to the research and design of the Kinetically Ordered Locomotion Tetrapod (KOLT) galloping robot.; This research recasts galloping in an engineering framework and defines a simple gait classification method based energy phases. This framework is also used to define the gallop using a hybrid model consisting of flight phase, single-contact, and double-contact. This research leverages theory in sensor design and estimation to develop an integrated hybrid estimation method based on the eight-step model. This was tested via laboratory experiments on KOLT and demonstrated in the field using a Labrador retriever.; This results of this work show improved motion estimation by combining kinetic state models with inertial measurements and measurement aids (such as: visual or range data). The major contributions of this research program are three-fold: (1) the discovery of new theories/methods to relate different, but related, sensor measurements to gain a more certain state estimate; (2) the integration of these methods into a field robust hardware package and, (3) the demonstration of collection and analysis of biomechanical data in field.; The matter of how a robot (or animal) reacts over terrain is deceptively simple, i.e., it thrusts and the rest is governed by Newton's laws of motion. Modeling this in detail however, still remains a significant challenge. By providing a robust estimate of the motion and its dynamics, the methods presented in this thesis move one step closer towards the great promise of fielded dynamic legged locomotion. |
