The Extreme Terrain Quadruped (ET-Quad) project, funded by the NASA Big Idea Challenge, developed the world’s first legged robot capable of running, climbing vertical surfaces, and swimming using the same set of legs. Researchers from CISCOR as well as a team of undergraduate students designed, built, and tested the first version of ET-Quad, which was presented at the NASA Big Idea Forum in Pasadena, CA in November 2022.

Work continues to develop ET-Quad into a highly capable quadrupedal robot platform ready for field deployment in a variety of scenarios, including Search & Rescue, seafloor exploration, disaster response, and lunar exploration.

PUBLICATIONS

Austin, M., Brown, J., Nicholson, J., and Clark, J. (November 8, 2022). "Dyno-Kinematic Leg Design for High Energy Robotic Locomotion." ASME. J. Mechanisms Robotics. June 2023; 15(3): 031001.

M. Austin, A. Chase, B. Van Stratum, and J. E. Clark, “Aquaclimber: a limbed swimming and climbing robot based on reduced order models,” Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2022.

Gallentine, J, Barth, EJ, Galloway, K, Van Stratum, B, Clark, J, & Shoele, K. "A Multimodal Climbing-Swimming Soft Robotic Lamprey." Proceedings of the BATH/ASME 2022 Symposium on Fluid Power and Motion Control. BATH/ASME 2022 Symposium on Fluid Power and Motion Control. Bath, UK. September 14–16, 2022.

M. Austin et al., "Optimizing Dynamic Legged Locomotion in Mixed, Resistive Media," 2022 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2022, pp. 1482-1488

M. P. Austin and J. E. Clark, "The Fluid Field SLIP Model: Terrestrial-Aquatic Dynamic Legged Locomotion," 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021, pp. 4948-4954, doi: 10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561102.

S. Gart, R. Alicea, W. Gao, J. Pusey, J. V. Nicholson, and J. E. Clark, “Legged locomotion in resistive terrains,” Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, vol. 16, no. 2, p. 025001, 2021.

J. V. Nicholson, S. Gart, J. Pusey and J. E. Clark, "Evaluating the Efficacy of Parallel Elastic Actuators on High-Speed, Variable Stiffness Running," 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020, pp. 3641-3648

J. Hackett, W. Gao, M. Daley, J. Clark and C. Hubicki, "Risk-constrained Motion Planning for Robot Locomotion: Formulation and Running Robot Demonstration," 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020, pp. 3633-3640

St Pierre, R., Gao, W., Clark, J. E., & Bergbreiter, S. (2020). Viscoelastic legs for open-loop control of gram-scale robots. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 15(5), 055005.

J. M. Brown, D. Peterson, J. Schmitt, N. Gravish, and J. E. Clark, “Impact of slope on dynamics of running and climbing,” Bioinspiration & biomimetics, vol. 15, no. 5, p. 056005, 2020.

W. Gao, C. Young, J. Nicholson, C. Hubicki and J. Clark, "Fast, Versatile, and Open-loop Stable Running Behaviors with Proprioceptive-only Sensing using Model-based Optimization," 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020, pp. 483-489

Van Stratum, B., Clark, J., & Shoele, K. (2020). The Effects of Internal Damping on Locomotion in Frictional Environments. In APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting Abstracts (pp. Q03-030).

J. Nicholson et al., "LLAMA: Design and Control of an Omnidirectional Human Mission Scale Quadrupedal Robot," 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020, pp. 3951-3958

Harper, M. et al. (2020). Model Refinement for Terrain Responsive Planning on a Dynamic Running Quadruped. In: Xiao, J., Kröger, T., Khatib, O. (eds) Proceedings of the 2018 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics. ISER 2018. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 11. Springer, Cham.

M. P. Austin, M. Y. Harper, J. M. Brown, E. G. Collins and J. E. Clark, "Navigation for Legged Mobility: Dynamic Climbing," in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 537-544, April 2020

R. Alicea, K. Ladyko and J. Clark, "Lift Your Leg: Mechanics of Running Through Fluids," 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2019, pp. 7455-7461

C. Lenon, M. Childers, M. Harper, C. Ordonez, N. Gupta, J. Pace, R. Kopinsky, A. Sharma, E. Collins, and J. Clark, “US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Assessment of Energy-Efficient and Model-Based Control,” ARL-TR-8042, June 2017. [bib | pdf]

E. Baum, M. Harper, R. Alicea, C. Ordonez, "Sound Identification for Fire-Fighting Mobile Robots," IEEE IRC 2018, Laguna, CA, Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2018. [bib | pdf]

N. Gupta, G. Francis, J. Ospina, A. Newaz, E. G. Collins, Jr., O. Faruque, R. Meeker and M. Harper, "Cost Optimal Control of Microgrids Having Solar Power and Energy Storage," submitted to IEEE Power & Energy Society Transmission & Distribution Conference & Exposition 2018 (IEEE PES T&D 2018]). [bib | pdf]

Projects

Extreme Terrain Quadruped (ET-Quad)

CISCOR

TUTORIALS

PUBLICATIONS