John Nicholson

Area of research

Biomedical Engineering · Aerospace Engineering

Research interest

Research topics from publications: Gait development on Minitaur, a direct drive quadrupedal robot; Energy Efficient Navigation for Running Legged Robots; Fore-Aft Leg Specialization Controller for a Dynamic Quadruped; Dyno-Kinematic Leg Design for High Energy Robotic Locomotion; Fast, Versatile, and Open-loop Stable Running Behaviors with Proprioceptive-only Sensing using Model-based Optimization; Lessons Learned from two Iterations of LLAMA, an Electrically Powered, Dynamic Quadruped Robot. Representative work: This paper describes the development of a dynamic, quadrupedal robot designed for rapid traversal and interaction in human environments. We explore improvements to both physical and control methods to a legged robot (Minitaur) in order to improve the speed and stability of its gaits and increase the range of obstacles that it can overcome, with an eye toward negotiating man-made terrains such as stairs. These modifications include an analysis of physical compliance, an investigation of foot and leg design, and the implementation of ground and obstacle contact sensing for inclusion in the control schemes. Structural and mechanical improvements were made to reduce undesired compliance for more Energy-efficient navigation is an important technology for mobile robots because of its potential to increase the operation time of the robot. In particular, when coupled with a dynamic legged quadruped, the need for energy savings is made more apparent as payloads are limited. Due to the complexity in modeling motion and power models of these robots, a new approach is necessary to effectively motion plan for these complex robots. We accomplish this by using Sampling-Based Model Predictive optimization (SBMPO) which was extended for use on the LLAMA quadrupedal platform in simulation. SBMPO allows for direct generation of trajectories while using a heuristic-based search to speed up computat

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