Haitao Yu

• Harbin Institute of Technology

In surface exploration missions, wheeled planetary vehicles have difficulty traveling on asteroids due to their weak gravitational fields. With the rapid development of hardware performance and control methods, quadruped robots have great potential to serve in asteroid exploration. When deploying or controlling the jumping motions of a quadruped ro...

This paper presents the development, control, and experimental validation of a novel bipedal robot with a passive tendon. The robot, featuring foldable legs, coaxial actuation, and compact folded size, is endowed with a leg configuration with a five-bar mechanism. Based on biological observations of human walking, a passive artificial tendon made o...

Traditional skid or wheeled landing gears fall short in meeting the rigorous requirements of challenging surfaces such as rugged terrain and swaying deck, which restraints the application in extreme tasks including disaster rescue, cargo transportation as well as ship-relevant operations. This paper proposes a novel legged landing gear scheme for t...

Unmanned helicopters equipped with adaptive landing gear will dramatically extend their application especially in dealing with challenging terrains. This study presents a novel cable-driven legged landing gear (CLG) with differential transmission for unmanned helicopters in complex landing environments. To obtain the preferred configuration of the...

Continuum robots recently have gained remarkable potential in exploring unstructured environments due to the merits of adaptability and flexibility. However, achieving flexible and steerable deformation in wide-range three-dimensional (3-D) spaces is still challenging for continuum robots. This article presents the design and control of a novel inf...

Identifying terrain parameters is important for high-fidelity simulation and high-performance control of planetary rovers. The wheel–terrain interaction classes (WTICs) are usually different for rovers traversing various types of terrain. Every terramechanics model corresponds to its wheel–terrain interaction class (WTIC). Therefore, for terrain pa...

In order to investigate the landing process of a vertical landing reusable vehicle, a dynamic model with a complex nonlinear dissipative element is established based on the discrete impulse step approach, which includes a three-dimensional multi-impact model considering friction and material compliance, and a multistage aluminum honeycomb theoretic...

Legged locomotion poses significant challenges due to its nonlinear, underactuated and hybrid dynamic properties. These challenges are exacerbated by the high-speed motion and presence of aerial phases in dynamic legged locomotion, which highlights the requirement for online planning based on current states to cope with uncertainty and disturbances...

In this investigation, the integrated attitude and landing control scheme for quadruped robots in asteroid landing mission scenario is discussed. Compared with the gravitational field environment of the Earth, the gravitational field near most asteroids has a smaller gravitational acceleration, a non-negligible horizontal acceleration component, an...

The task of performing locomotion and manipulation simultaneously poses several scientific challenges, such as how to deal with the coupling effects between them and how to cope with unknown disturbances introduced by manipulation. This paper presents an inverse dynamics-based whole-body controller for a torque-controlled quadrupedal manipulator ca...

To achieve agile running of a biped robot, dynamic stability, joint coordination, and real-time ability are required. In this paper, a task-space-based controller framework is constructed with a reduced-order 3D-SLIP model. On the top layer, a 3D-SLIP model based planner is employed for center-of-mass trajectory planning. The planner built with opt...

The reusable launch vehicle (RLV) presents a new avenue for reducing cost of space transportation. The landing mechanism, which provides landing support and impact absorption, is a vital component of the RLV at final stage of recovery. This study proposes a novel legged deployable landing mechanism (LDLM) for RLV. The Watt-II six-bar mechanism is a...

In this article, we present a novel tension distribution algorithm for cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) with two degrees of actuation redundancy. The algorithm consists of calculating the tension feasible region (TFR) and optimizing the tension distribution. The TFR has been innovatively calculated without relying on the convex hull method. The...

Cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) are gaining increasing attention due to their low weight, low cost, and power consumption characteristics. However, cable-driven systems have limited rotational capabilities without additional actuator systems. In this paper, we propose a new type of spatial CDPR that provides an unlimited rotation axis without...

Dynamic constant-force performance is essential in suspended astronaut micro-gravity simulation systems. Of particular concern is the active constant-force system comprising a low-stiffness mechanism because of its combination of high-speed response and low stiffness. However, existing simulation systems demonstrate limited performance owing to lar...

Cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) are gaining increasing attention due to their low weight, cost, and power consumption characteristics. Adaptive CDPRs are special cable-driven systems in which the locations of the pulley blocks can be modified. In this paper, we propose a new type of adaptive CDPR that can passively modify the attachment points...

In order to comprehensively evaluate the landing performance of vertical-landing vehicle and increase the probability of successful landing, a sagittal dynamics model of legged-type vertical landing vehicle on landing process was established, including the elastic-plastic collision model of multi-rigid body system to predict discontinuous process....

This paper studies synchronization control of a novel devised treadmill-based testing apparatus for wheeled planetary rover roaming at low speed. To offer satisfactory tracking performance and to ameliorate internal conflicts amongst individual treadmills during rover-treadmill interaction, a decentralized synchronization control strategy integrati...

As a versatile template characterizing the center of mass movements in legged locomotion, the sagittal spring-loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) model has been extensively explored in both biomechanics and robotics. Despite concise in mathematical formulation, the accurate analytical representation of the SLIP model is unaccessible due to its intrinsi...

As a well-explored template that captures the essential dynamical behaviors of legged locomotion on sagittal plane, the spring-loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) model has been extensively employed in both biomechanical study and robotics research. Aiming at fully leveraging the merits of the SLIP model to generate the adaptive trajectories of the cen...

At present, realizing the reusability of vertical takeoff and landing vehicles is one of the effective ways to reduce launch cost. When the carrier returns to the landing site, it relies on the cooperation of deployment, locking and buffering that absorbs energy of the landing support mechanism, offering a smooth and soft landing. Aiming at devisin...

Legged robots have demonstrated significant achievements in recent years. Some legged robots have considerable flexibility and movement abilities. However, certain obstacles restrict the practical application of legged robots, such as their high energy consumption. The energy consumption of a legged robot is significantly higher than that of a whee...

Local reactive behaviors endow animals the ability to exhibit agile and dexterous performance when traversing challenging terrains. This paper presents a novel locomotion control method based on the central pattern generator (CPG) concept for hexapod walking robot with local reactive behavior to cope with terrain irregularities. Firstly, a two-laye...

Door-opening is a critical problem for robots used for rescue purposes in nuclear power plants (NPPs). A force and torque (F/T) sensor is not used in the rescue task for door-opening in an NPPs environment. It is therefore necessary to study the dynamic model of door-opening. An NPPs door and door handle dynamic model are significant to the mechani...

Motion planning plays an important role in the performance optimization of legged robots. This paper presents a method to minimize the impact force and energy consumption effectively by providing an integrated strategy of motion planning subject to velocity and acceleration constraints. The parameters defined for the motion planning are computed to...

In low-gravity suspension simulation experiments, the partial gravitational forces of tested objects are balanced by the constant vertical forces on cables generated by constant-force systems. To improve system robustness against external payload disturbance, such systems usually employ low-stiffness mechanisms. The schematic diagram of our propose...

This paper deals with the reactive behavior generation for hexapod walking inspired by insects’ robust and dexterous performance in complex environment. The single-leg controller including a coupled CPG network and linear coefficient converter is developed to yield stable and rhythmic signals for joint movement, the limit cycle behavior of which is...

The gradeability of a rover is important for the detection in Mars exploration mission. The traditional rovers used in former American Mars projects and Chinese Chang’e project are all wheeled rover. The gradeability of this type rover is limited by the wheel-soil interaction. The wheel-legged rover has stronger gradeability than wheeled rover beca...

As a substitute for humans, the mobile manipulator has become increasingly vital for on-site rescues at Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) in recent years. The high energy efficiency of the mobile manipulator when executing specific rescue tasks is of great importance for the mobile manipulator. This paper focuses on the energy consumption of a robot exec...

With the increasing application of wheeled mobile robots on soft terrains, the challenge of lateral and longitudinal slippage existing in the contact surface between the wheels and the terrain has attracted more attention. To address the difficulties caused by the lateral and longitudinal slippage, this paper proposes an improved linear active dist...

Wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) often suffer from the longitudinal slipping when moving on the loose soil of the surface of the moon during exploration. Longitudinal slip is the main cause of WMRs' delay in trajectory tracking. In this paper, a nonlinear extended state observer (NESO) is introduced to estimate the longitudinal velocity in order to est...

In this work, we investigate a state estimation problem for a full-car semi-active suspension system. To account for the complex calculation and optimization problems, a vehicle-to- cloud-to-vehicle (V2C2V) scheme is utilized. Moving horizon estimation is introduced for the state estimation system design. All the optimization problems are solved in...

In order to achieve the training of drivers of hexapod robots, key techniques of driving simulator for hexapod robots are studied, and then a real-time driving simulator for hexapod robots is developed. The system is established under Eurosim, a real-time simulation frame for complex systems, to guarantee the real-time interaction between the hardw...

In order to achieve the training of drivers of hexapod robots, key techniques of driving simulator for hexapod robots are studied, and then a real-time driving simulator for hexapod robots is developed. The system is established under Eurosim, a real-time simulation frame for complex systems, to guarantee the real-time interaction between the hardw...

This paper presents a locomotion control method based on central pattern generator (CPG) for hexapod walking robot to achieve gait generation with smooth transition. By deriving an analytical limit cycle approximation of the Van der Pol oscillator, a simple diffusive coupling scheme is proposed to construct a ring-shape CPG network with phase-locke...

Minimizing the energy and flow consumption is significant to realize the locomotion of a hydraulically actuated hexapod robot for mobile field applications. This paper proposes a low energy cost foot trajectory planning method to realize a constant velocity of the body and optimize the power and flow consumption of a hexapod robot. A dephased gait...

Gait planning is an important part of robotics research, and turning gait is an important and useful walking gait of a hexapod robot. But researches on turning gait of hexapod robots are limited. This paper presents the structure of a hydraulic hexapod walking robot. The coordinate of the leg is defined, and the positive and inverse kinematic equat...

The great success of the Sojourner rover in the Mars Pathfinder mission set off a global upsurge of planetary exploration with autonomous wheeled mobile robots (WMRs), or rovers. Planetary WMRs are among the most intelligent space systems that combine robotic intelligence (robint), virtual intelligence (virtint), and human intelligence (humint) syn...

For a hydraulically actuated hexapod robot, a kinematic model of the walking leg with three segments is established. The trajectory of foot is planned, and the influence of leg length ratio on walking speed, joint angular velocity and acceleration, workspace of foot and body flexibility is analyzed. The indexes are reasonable when coxa proportion i...

This paper proposes a novel CPG-based control architecture for hexapod walking robot. We investigate the CPG systems from the perspective of network synchronization. In this way the motion control of hexapod robot can be refined into the gait generation level and joints coordination level. On the first level, we develop a gait generator consists of...

The spring-loaded inverted pendulum(SLIP) has been widely studied in both animals and robots. Generally, the majority of the relevant theoretical studies deal with elastic leg, the linear leg length-force relationship of which is obviously conflict with the biological observations. A planar spring-mass model with a nonlinear spring leg is presented...

This paper presents a novel method of perturbation to obtain the analytic approximate solution to the Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) dynamics in stance phase with considering the effect of gravity. This perturbation solution achieves higher accuracy in predicting the apex state variables than the typical existing analytic approximations. Pa...

An approximate analytical solution of SLIP (spring loaded inverted pendulum) model dynamics in stance phase is proposed based on perturbation theory, aiming at resolving the lack of analytical method to deal with SLIP model dynamics. The Poincare map of apex height in flight phase is established through which the entire dynamics of SLIP model is de...

In this paper, a stance control strategy of the Spring Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) hopper with adjustable stiffness of leg spring is proposed. Due to the lack of a closed form analytic solution of SLIP dynamics, a novel perturbation method is developed to obtain the approximate analytic solution of the SLIP dynamics in stance phase, based on wh...

The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP), or monopedal runner, is widely used to depict running and hopping in mammalian and human locomotion, which is also serving as a template for running robot design. This classic model describes quite a simple mechanical system. Nevertheless issue of seeking the accurate analytic solution revealing the chara...

In this paper, a novel method with perturbation technique is proposed to obtain analytic approximate solutions to the SLIP dynamics in stance phase with considering the effect of gravity. The perturbation solution achieves higher accuracy in predicting the apex trajectory and stance locomotion by comparing with other existing analytic approximation...

This paper deals with the dynamics and motion control of a spherical robot designed for reconnaissance and unstructured hostile environment exploration. The robot in this paper has three DOFs and two inputs, of which the nature is a nonlinear and underactuated system with nonholonomic dynamic constraints. The improved construction of two pendulums...