Short Description
The robot "Kangaroo" is a bipedal robot manufactured and distributed by the company PAL Robotics. The robot is characterized in particular by its drive technology, which was designed for dynamic movements such as jumping and running. This was achieved through the use of nonlinear kinematic couplings in the mechanical design. The robot is suitable for conducting research on bipedal locomotion, especially for path planning and control.
The robot is about 145 cm tall, weighs about 40kg and has 6 drives per leg. The drives are electrically driven ball screws with additional force sensors. The drives are controlled backdrivable and are highly robust against mechanical shocks, such as those that occur during dynamic running movements. The robot is controlled via an integrated real-time computer and uses the robotics middleware ROS. According to the manufacturer, the robot's runtime is up to 6 hours.
On the software side, the robot offers libraries for kinematics and dynamics calculation, as well as for gait pattern generation, state estimation, and whole body control.
Contact Person
Christian Ott
Research Services
For interests on research servives or cooperations, please contact us directly.
Methods & Expertise for Research Infrastructure
In the Robotic Systems Lab of the Automation and Control Institute (ACIN), we deal with the control of humanoid walking robots, among other things. We develop algorithms for stable gait generation and whole-body control. The applications include stable locomotion on different ground conditions as well as dynamic running movements. In addition to the development of robotic control algorithms, we are also interested in the validation of biomechanical hypotheses through robotic systems and experiments.