• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.131-140
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• 2005

Fault-tolerant gait generation of a hexapod robot with crab walking is proposed. The considered fault is a locked joint failure, which prevents a joint of a leg from moving and makes it locked in a known position. Due to the reduced workspace of a failed leg, fault-tolerant crab walking has a limitation in the range of heading direction. In this paper, an accessible range of the crab angle is derived for a given configuration of the failed leg and, based on the principles of fault-tolerant gait planning, periodic crab gaits are proposed in which a hexapod robot realizes crab walking after a locked joint failure, having a reasonable stride length and stability margin. The proposed crab walking is then applied to path planning on uneven terrain with positive obstacles. i.e., protruded obstacles which legged robots cannot cross over but have to take a roundabout route to avoid. The robot trajectory should be generated such that the crab angle does not exceed the restricted range caused by a locked joint failure.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.245-250
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• 2019

Milli-scale crawling robots have been widely studied due to their maneuverability in confined spaces. For successful crawling, the crawling robots basically required to fulfill alternating gait with elliptical foot trajectory. The alternating gait with elliptical foot trajectory normally generates both forward and upward motion. The upward motion makes the aerial phase and during the aerial phase, the forward motion enables the crawling robots to proceed. This simultaneous forward and upward motion finally results in fast crawling speed. In this paper, we propose a novel alternating mechanism to make a crab-inspired eight-legged crawling robot. The key design strategy is an alternating mechanism based on double four-bar linkages. Crab-like robots normally employs gear-chain drive to make the opposite phase between neighboring legs. To use the gear-chain drive to this milli-scale robot system, however, is not easy because of heavy weight and mechanism complexity. To solve the issue, the double-four bar linkages has been invented to generate the oaring motion for transmitting the equal motion in the opposite phase. Thanks to the proposed mechanism, the robot crawls just like the real crab with the crawling speed of 0.57 m/s.

• Biomaterials and Biomechanics in Bioengineering
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.249-269
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• 2015

A problem faced by oil companies is the maintenance of the location register of pipelines that cross the surf zone, the regular survey of their location, and also their inspection. A survey of the state of art did not allow identifying operating systems capable of executing such tasks. Commercial technologies available on the market also do not address this problem and/or do not satisfy the presented requirements. A possible solution is to use robotic systems which have the ability to walk on the shore and in the surf zone, subject to existing currents and ripples, and being able to withstand these ambient conditions. In this sense, the authors propose the development of a spider crab biologically inspired robot to achieve those tasks. Based on these ideas, this work presents a biomechanical study of the spider crab, its modeling and simulation using the SimMechanics toolbox of Matlab/Simulink, which is the first phase of this more vast project. Results show a robot model that is moving in an "animal like" manner, the locomotion, the algorithm presented in this paper allows the crab to walk sideways, in the desired direction.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.159-164
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• 2011

In this study, a crab robot is implemented in H/W based on four-bar linkage mechanism and Jansen mechanism, and its kinematics is analysed. A vision camera is attached to the mechanism, which makes the proposed robot a kind of biologically inspired robot for image acquisition. Three ultrasonic sensors are adopted for obstacle avoidance. In addition, the biologically inspired robot can achieve the mission appointed by a programmer outside, based on RF and Blue-tooth communication module. For the design and implementation of a crab robot, it is need to get joint variable, a foot point, and their relation. Thus, the proposed kinematic analysis is very important process for the design and implementation of legged robots.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.141-148
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• 2012

This paper proposes fault tolerant gaits of a quadruped robot with feet of flat shape. Fault tolerant gaits make it possible for a legged robot to continue static walking against a leg failure. In the previous researches, it was assumed that a legged robot had feet that have point contact with the surface. When the robot is endowed with feet having flat shape, fault tolerant gaits can show better performance compared with the former gaits, especially in terms of the stride length and gait stability. In this paper, fault tolerant gaits of a quadruped robot against a locked joint failure are addressed in straight-line motion and crab walking, respectively.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.329-338
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• 1994

This paper presents a novel method of path planning for a quadruped walking robot on irregular terrain. In the previous study on the path planning problem of mobile robots, it has been usually focused on the collision-free path planning for wheeled robots. The path planning problem of legged roboth, however, has unique aspects from the point of viw that the legged robot can cross over the obstacles and the gait constraint should be considered in the process of planning a path. To resolve this unique problem systematically, a new concept of the artificial intensity field of light is numerically constructed over the configuration space of the robot including the transformed obstacles and a feasible path is sought in the field. Also, the efficiency of the proposed method is shown by various simulation results.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.284-291
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• 2012

Recently, development of underwater robot has actively been in progress in the world as ROV(Remotely Operator Vehicle) and AUV(Autonomous Unmmanded Vehicle) style. But KIOST(Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology), beginning in 2010, launched the R&D project to develop the robot, dubbed CRABSTER(Crab + (Lob)ster) in a bid to enhance the safety and efficiency of resource exploration. CRABSTER has been designed to be able to walk and swim with its own legs without screws. Among many research subjects regarding CRABSTER, optimal swimming patterns are handled in this paper. In previous studies, drag forces during one period with different values for angle of each joint were derived. However kinematics of real-robot and fluid-dynamics are not considered. We conducted simulations with an optimization algorithm for swimming by considering simplified fluid dynamics in this paper. Drag-coefficients applied to the simulation were approximated values calculated by CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics : Tecplot 360, ANSYS). In addition, optimized swimming patterns were applied to a real robot. The experiments with the real robot were conducted in circumstances in the water. As a result, when the experiments were carried out in the water, a regular pattern of drag force output came out depending on the movement of the robot. We confirmed the fact that the drag forces from the simulation and the experiment has a high similarity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.660-666
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• 2011

In this paper, we proposed a Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) to search the optimal link lengths for legged walking robot. In order to apply the PSO algorithm for the proposed, its walking robot kinematic analysis is needed. A crab robot based on four-bar linkage mechanism and Jansen mechanism is implemented in H/W. For the performance index of PSO, the stride length of the legged walking robot is defined, based on the propose kinematic analysis. Comparative simulation results present to illustrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.509-515
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• 2010

In this paper, the mechanism that can walk efficiently in wet land or sand area is proposed. A vision camera is attached to the mechanism, which makes a kind of biologically inspired robot for coast guard. This visionary information enables the biologically inspired robot to react in peripheral environment by a soft-computing algorithm. In addition, the biologically inspired robot can achieve the mission appointed by a programmer connecting with outside, based on RF and Blue-tooth communication module. Therefore, the purpose of this research is the implementation of the biologically inspired robot that can operate most adaptively in sand and wet surface based on Theo Jansen mechanism.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.614-620
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• 2009

The force distribution in multi-legged robots is a constrained, optimization problem. The solution to the problem is the set points of the leg contact forces for a particular system task. In this paper, an efficient and general formulation of the force distribution problem is developed using linear programming. The considered walking robot is a quadruped robot with a locked-joint failure, i.e., a joint of the failed leg is locked at a known place. For overcoming the drawback of marginal stability in fault-tolerant gaits, we define safety margin on friction constraints as the objective function to be maximized. Dynamic features of locked-joint failure are represented by equality and inequality constraints of linear programming. Unlike the former study, our result can be applied to various forms of walking such as crab and turning gaits. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed scheme.