Calendar

Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
8/21
First class meeting 4:00p - 5:50p ECEB 1002
8/28
Second class meeting 4:00p - 5:50p ECEB 1002
CAD assignment due 11:59p
Add/Drop Deadline due 11:59p
9/4
Third class meeting 4:00p - 5:50p ECEB 1002
Project approval due 11:59p
9/11
First team meetings with TAs 4:00p ECEB 3002
Proposals due 11:59p
Team Contract due 11:59p
Initial Conversation With Machine Shop (required if using the shop) due 4:00p ECEB 1047
9/18
9/25
Design Document due 11:59p
10/2
Design Review 8:00a - 6:00p With Instructor and TAs
Design Review
Fliflet: ECEB 2070
Design Review
Mironenko: ECEB 2072
Design Review
Shao: ECEB 2074
Design Review 8:00a - 4:00p With Instructor and TAs
PCB Review 4:00p - 6:00p ECEB 5070
Design Review
Fliflet: ECEB 2070
Design Review
Mironenko: ECEB 2072
Design Review
Shao: ECEB 2074
Design Review 8:00a With Instructor and TAs
Design Review
Fliflet: ECEB 2070
Design Review
Mironenko: ECEB 2072
Design Review
Shao: ECEB 2074
10/9
Last day for revisions to the machine shop due ECEB 1048
10/16
10/23
10/30
11/6
11/13
Mock demo During weekly TA mtg
Mock demo During weekly TA mtg
Mock demo During weekly TA mtg
Mock demo During weekly TA mtg
Mock demo During weekly TA mtg
11/20
Fall Break
Fall Break
Fall Break
Fall Break
Fall Break
11/27
Final Demo With Instructor and TAs
Final Demo With Instructor and TAs
Final Demo With Instructor and TAs
Mock Presentation With Comm and ECE TAs
Mock Presentation With Comm and ECE TAs
12/4
Final Presentation With instructor and TAs
Final Presentation With Instructor and TAs
Final Presentation With Instructors and TAs
Final papers due 11:59p
Lab checkout 3:00p - 4:30p With TA
Award Ceremony 4:30p - 5:30p ECEB 3002
Lab Notebook Due due 11:59p

Dynamic Legged Robot

Joseph Byrnes, Kanyon Edvall, Ahsan Qureshi

Featured Project

We plan to create a dynamic robot with one to two legs stabilized in one or two dimensions in order to demonstrate jumping and forward/backward walking. This project will demonstrate the feasibility of inexpensive walking robots and provide the starting point for a novel quadrupedal robot. We will write a hybrid position-force task space controller for each leg. We will use a modified version of the ODrive open source motor controller to control the torque of the joints. The joints will be driven with high torque off-the-shelf brushless DC motors. We will use high precision magnetic encoders such as the AS5048A to read the angles of each joint. The inverse dynamics calculations and system controller will run on a TI F28335 processor.

We feel that this project appropriately brings together knowledge from our previous coursework as well as our extracurricular, research, and professional experiences. It allows each one of us to apply our strengths to an exciting and novel project. We plan to use the legs, software, and simulation that we develop in this class to create a fully functional quadruped in the future and release our work so that others can build off of our project. This project will be very time intensive but we are very passionate about this project and confident that we are up for the challenge.

While dynamically stable quadrupeds exist— Boston Dynamics’ Spot mini, Unitree’s Laikago, Ghost Robotics’ Vision, etc— all of these robots use custom motors and/or proprietary control algorithms which are not conducive to the increase of legged robotics development. With a well documented affordable quadruped platform we believe more engineers will be motivated and able to contribute to development of legged robotics.

More specifics detailed here:

https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=30338

Project Videos