Achievement

CiBER IGERT Trainee Nick Kohut took inspiration from the discovery on inertial assisted control using tails made by fellow trainee Evan Chang-Sui that was published last year in the journal, Nature. Nick designed and constructed the world's fastest turning legged robot by using tail motion in the horizontal plane. It is able to precisely turn at 400 degrees per second while running forward at 32 cm in a second all in a space of 4 cm. To accomplish this feat, he developed a planar dynamic model of inertial turning for legged robots that incorporated friction and an empirical motor model. He designed a nonlinear feedback controller to ensure turning precision over variable surfaces. Nick’s analysis showed that inertial and aerodynamic turning are more effective than previous methods for making turns while running forward at high speeds. His discovery will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2013 (ICRA).