Live Demonstration: Tensegrity State Estimation

摘要

Tensegrity robots present exciting opportunities for exploring remote, unstructured environments. Deploying tenseg-rity robots in the field requires robust sensing for proprioception and feedback control toward future autonomy; however, few tensegrity robots are capable of state estimation from onboard sensing. We demonstrate the first tensegrity robot that can estimate its shape and orientation relative to a global frame. Our robot uses nine sensor tendons to measure the length between rod ends and two inertial measurement units to estimate the orientation of its rods relative to Earth's gravitational and magnetic fields. The robot accurately reconstructs its state within 10 mm root mean square error in real time. State reconstruction occurs during dynamic locomotion gaits and in quasi-static, hands-on interaction with visitors.