Jérôme Braure - 2003-2004

Jérome Braure (Diploma work 2003)

Participation to the Construction of a Salamander Robot:
Exploration of the Morphological Configuration and the Locomotion Controller

The goal of this project is to:

Provide a software model of the salamander running in Webots Dynamics. The model must be able to trot, swim, and perform serpentine locomotion. The software model will be compared to the real robot, to improve the simulation.
Characterize the legged and serpentine locomotion, the influence of the morphological and controller parameters.

Abstract

Simulators are very helpful tools in mobile robotics. They provide help and can accelerate the development process, they allow a broader variety of test-runs than the real robot does, without risking any damage. They can furthermore plot or record any type of data in a much easier and reproducible way than with a physical device. This document describes the development of a software model of an amphibious salamander/snake robot for simulation purposes with the mobile robot simulator Webots. In a second phase, test runs are performed and the results analyzed. These experiments tend to characterize the influence of the different morphology and controller parameters on the locomotion, in particular on the velocity and its stability. This work's aim is also to provide a software model of a real robot currently under assembly in order to put the model and the simulator to the test for possible enhancement.

Project Report

report.pdf

Webview animations

These animations are playbacks of Webots simulation runs. The user can freely change the point of view using the mouse to enjoy the 3D animation. Webview is required to play the animations and can be downloaded here (for free).

salamander_trotting.wva [343 kB]

snake_swimming.wva [332 kB]

snake_swimming_turning.wva [298 kB]

double.wva [589 kB]

aquatic_dance [532 kB]

snake.wva [504 kB]

salamander_duo.wva [3.2 MB]

dive.wva [612 KB]