FROG Robot Wants to Walk This Way
You would expect some jumping from a robot named FROG, but instead of jumping, FROG is focused on walking. The acronym stands for Four-legged Robot for Optimal Gait, a quadruped developed to test gait control, among other things.
The robot, which was built by Wei Wang's team at the Institute of Automation, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is powered by DC motors and used by Wang and his students to develop locomotion algorithms for gait control , gait transition, and other factors involved in the robot's stride.
FROG-I, the group's first version, is about 3.3 feet (1 meter) tall and weighs around 121 pounds (55 kilograms). Each leg has two motors one on the hip and another on the knee giving it eight degrees of freedom. The legs also hold various sensing devices, including joint angle sensors, an acceleration sensor, a gyro sensor, foot-ground contact sensors, and ultrasonic sensors. A pan-tilt camera rounds out the robot's sensory array.
According to a report from IEEE, Wang designed the robot as part of a project to eventually build a robotic triceratops that could be used for entertainment applications in dinosaur museums or expos.
At the moment, the robot is just preliminary research, but if they have the resources, Wang and his students hope to continue to improve FROG.
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