WORMS
During my sophomore year I joined WORMS, a club affiliated with the Aero Astro department at MIT working on further developing a legged robot that was initially developed in response to NASA’s Big Ideas Challenge. WORMS is a configurable robot that allows users to attach its limbs at connection points on its pallet, allowing it to act as a quadruped or a hexapod. It was developed as a solution for future space exploration and sampling applications that involve navigation extreme terrains.
The team hopes to develop WORMS 2.0, which involves a full redesign of the legs to support 5 DOF, refactoring the code to support autonomy, and streamlining the electrical system around custom PCBs.
Simulation
I self-learned how to generate URDF files to simulate the full robot in Drake. I leveraged XACRO to modularize the robot’s components and generate URDF files quicker. I also added a moon terrain environment, collision and inertia properties to make the model more realistic and receptive to external factors.
Build
I’ve created torque and power models to guide our mechanical design. The torque model estimates the required amount of torque needed for different configurations and robot gaits, including turtle (where the pallet rests on a stand) and quadruped (four legs are connected).
I’m currently working on designing collinear and perpendicular joints in OnShape and using FEA to guide my design. Then, we plan on moving on to designing a full limb.
Results
This project is continuing!