Design of a hopping leg mechanism for planetary exploration based on a genetic algorithm and a dynamic granular terrain model
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In recent years, hopping robots have gained significant attention as a way to develop a planetary rover, which is compact and highly traversable. However, hopping on granular media such as regolith has not yet been sufficiently studied due to the difficulty of modeling the dynamic interaction between robots and sand. The purpose of this study is to develop a design method of a hopping robot leg, and a dynamic interaction model in the process. In contrast to the present sand model based on quasi-static measurement, we fitted a model with dynamic measurement and applied it to multiobjective optimization of leg design. In the optimization process, we proposed a novel evaluation index that simultaneously assesses obstacle avoidance and mobility performance, and optimizes along with the index of compactness. Verification experiments were conducted using hopping robots with an optimized design. The model showed better performance and obtained leg mechanism parameters suitable for the robot design. This indicates that our research can be applied to other robots involving dynamic interaction with granular media, such as high-speed legged robots and planetary lander.
Source: Advanced Robotics
Authors: Rio Makino, Takao Maeda
Institution: Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4415651461