CAREER: Dynamic Locomotion with Plasticity for Remote Sensing in Crawlspaces

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Crawlspaces are everywhere: caves, karst landscapes, shafts, ducts, ballast tanks, pipes, and grain elevators. Data from these environments holds immense scientific (biodiversity and geological processes), societal (archaeological and cultural remains), environmental (natural resources and mineral deposits), and health-security-economical (asset management and monitoring) significance. However, human operation in crawlspaces is costly, slow, and risky. Existing snake and insect robots can crawl in pipes and operate within centimeter-scale spaces; however, they are too slow or not completely autonomous. There is a pressing need for fast, agile, and efficient autonomous systems specifically designed for crawlspaces. Legged locomotion and multi-rotor flight show promise in addressing this challenge, having already revolutionized numerous remote sensing tasks by surpassing the capabilities of any other robot category. However, their operation remains limited to spacious tunnels. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project supports research that seeks to harness the exceptional agility, efficiency, and speed of legged and rotary-wing robots and adapt it specifically for use in crawlspaces. The project designs a multi-modal robot with extensive locomotion plasticity capable of efficiently traversing extremely tight crawlspaces with agility through bipedal walking and flying. Furthermore, this project aims to promote gender equity in Northeastern University’s robotics program, a significant area of growth identified by school leadership. Achieving efficient, agile, and fast legged-aerial locomotion in crawlspaces represents a new advancement in robot locomotion. Three knowledge gaps still exist in bridging legged locomotion and multi-rotor flight in crawlspaces: (1) Actuation challenges hinder the scalability of motion control performance, necessary for fast and precise foot placement, when transitioning from legged robots designed for open spaces to smaller robots operating in crawlspaces; (2) Instability issues arising from multi-rotors’ air jets near surfaces pose flight immobilization risks; (3) Crawlspaces need several modes of locomotion and there is no systematic robot design framework to accommodate the requirements dictated by these modes. This project will engage in fundamental research to address these gaps, designing a bioinspired locomotion robot capable of walking, hovering, jumping, and running over inclined surfaces to push the operational envelope of mobile robots, making autonomous operations inside extremely tight crawlspaces possible. The project’s efforts revolve around robot and control design. This project’s key areas of innovation include (1) Introducing actuation design paradigms for small robots based on computational structure design for achieving comparable motion control performance seen in large robots; (2) Research and validation of new locomotion feats and underlying models and nonlinear controllers based on the integration of posture manipulation and thrust vectoring to overcome air jet risks in aerial robotics; (3) Co-designing robots and controls through generative design methods to accommodate conflicting requirements imposed by many locomotion modes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.