A while ago I derived some closed form solutions for the inverse force dynamics for a 2 dimensional mammal geometry leg.  Now that I want to execute more dynamic gaits, I need to be able to control the velocity and force of the 3 dimensional leg in real time.  That means I need to be able to go forward and back between the two representations.  The first being joint angles, joint velocities, and joint torques – the second being 3D position, velocity, and force.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve had an increasing number of people looking for help with self-built moteus controllers which is great!  However, until today there hasn’t been a great way to get help.  Blog comments fall off the front page quickly, and there is no real other mechanism.

Thus, I’ve created a discord server:

• mjbots discord server

There you can chat about the moteus controller, servo, or the quada0 and get feedback and help in closer to real time.  Thanks for collaborating!

A previous simulator I had built for Super Mega Microbot was based on the “DART” robotics toolkit.  It is a C++ library with python bindings that includes kinematics, dynamics, and graphical rendering capabilities under a BSD license.  I wanted to use some of its dynamics capabilities for future gait work on the quad A0, and eventually re-incorporate its simulation capabilities, so integrated a subset of it into mjbots/bazel_deps.

• github: Incorporate a subset of dart and its dependencies

My outdoor filming for the project update video was cut short when the machine cut power to the motors, fell down, and one of the legs snapped off.  Fortunately, I already had plenty of footage when that happened, so it didn’t really impact the video.

First, this demonstrates the not too surprising fact that this particular part of the leg design could use to be improved.  Second, and the topic of this post, is improving what the machine does when the inevitable failure does occur.

My last video gave an overview of what I’ve accomplished over the past year.  Now, let me talk about what I’m planning to work on going forward:

I intend to divide my efforts into two parallel tracks.  The first is to demonstrate increased capabilities and continue learning with the existing quad A0, and second is to design and manufacture the next revision of all its major components.

New capabilities and learning

The first, and most important capability I want to develop is an improved gait and locomotion system.  While the moteus servos in the quad A0 are capable of high rate compliant control, the gait engine that I’m using now is still basically the same one that I made for the HerkuleX servos 5 years ago.  It just commands open loop positions to each of the servos and uses no feedback from the platform at all.  This severely limits what the robot can do.  For instance, if the terrain is not level, legs will drag on the ground or it will not walk at all.  The maximum speed is relatively slow and achieving it requires careful tuning of servo-level gains.  While it is more robust than nearly any other open loop 4 legged walker while standing up, even small disturbances can cause it to fall over.

While I’ve been working to some degree on quadrupedal robots for the last 5 years, it has been just about 1 year since I kicked up my effort a notch, with my post about improved actuators for SMMB.  I figured it was a good time now to produce a video summarizing what I’ve gotten done over the last year:

Concurrently, I’ve posted a “state of the project” text update on hackaday.io, just to get a wider readership.  If you’ve been reading here all along, there won’t be anything terribly new there, but it is a decent summary of where I stand.