Open-source quadruped robot lets scientists test how limb design shapes speed and energy use in animals.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a modular, open-source robot that can rapidly change its body proportions to test how anatomy affects movement. Called The Robot of Theseus, or TROT, the machine is designed to help biologists and roboticists isolate biomechanical factors that are difficult to measure in living animals.
The quadruped robot is built from commercially available motors and mostly 3D-printed parts. Its components can be rearranged to model different limb lengths, weight distributions and joint ranges of motion. With access to common 3D printers, the total cost of parts and materials is under $4,000.TROT was created to answer long-standing questions about animal locomotion. Why can cheetahs sprint so fast? What gives wolves their endurance? While animal experiments provide clues, many variables such as limb mass, muscle properties and joint mechanics change at the same time, making it hard to isolate a single factor.Talia Moore, assistant professor of robotics with a background in evolutionary biology, wanted a system that could quickly test how changes in limb proportions affect movement. In paleontology, bones reveal structure but not performance.Rebuilding evolution fast“In paleontology, we can go back and look at bones, but it is really difficult to understand how these changes in limb proportion, or in range of motion, may have affected the way an animal can move,” said Talia Moore, assistant professor of robotics with a background in evolutionary biology and corresponding author of the study. “But each robot took years to design and construct.”“I wanted to make a robot that could easily shapeshift into several different extinct species proportions, so that we could compare them, and see how the evolution of those limb lengths and other features would affect their locomotion. With TROT, 60 million years of evolutionary changes in body size can happen in 20 minutes.”The robot’s modular plans are meant to be usable by researchers without formal robotics training. Most parts fit together in only one way, reducing assembly errors and speeding up iteration.“Traditional robots are designed with an emphasis on industrial applications and are expensive to make. TROT was designed with ease of fabrication in mind,” said Karthik Urs, first author of the study.Isolating movement variablesOne motivation for building TROT came from a 1974 experiment comparing cheetahs and goats. Physics predicts that limbs with more mass concentrated away from the hip require more energy to swing. Cheetahs have tapered limbs with a lower moment of inertia, which should make running more efficient. Yet the study found that cheetahs and goats expend nearly the same energy while running.Because so many anatomical and physiological traits differ between the two animals, the specific impact of limb mass distribution could not be isolated. Moore’s team used TROT to vary only the weight distribution in the robot’s limbs, allowing them to directly measure the energetic cost or benefit of that single change.To simulate the spring-like behavior of muscles and tendons without using physical springs, the robot relies on backdrivable motors that can recover energy as they are driven backward. This approach avoids measurement errors introduced by elastic components while still mimicking biological energy storage and return.Although TROT is primarily a research and teaching tool, its findings could inform commercial robot design. Most existing quadruped robots use similar fore and hind leg configurations. A customizable platform like TROT could help engineers determine whether specialized limb designs improve performance enough to justify added manufacturing complexity.The team has made the robot’s plans publicly available for download. The study was published in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.
Biomechanics Evolutionary Biology Legged Locomotion Modular Robot Open-Source Robotics Quadruped Robot University Of Michigan
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