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Bionic lightweight design of limb leg units for hydraulic quadruped robots by additive manufacturing and topology optimization

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Abstract

Galloping cheetahs, climbing mountain goats, and load hauling horses all show desirable locomotion capability, which motivates the development of quadruped robots. Among various quadruped robots, hydraulically driven quadruped robots show great potential in unstructured environments due to their discrete landing positions and large payloads. As the most critical movement unit of a quadruped robot, the limb leg unit (LLU) directly affects movement speed and reliability, and requires a compact and lightweight design. Inspired by the dexterous skeleton–muscle systems of cheetahs and humans, this paper proposes a highly integrated bionic actuator system for a better dynamic performance of an LLU. We propose that a cylinder barrel with multiple element interfaces and internal smooth channels is realized using metal additive manufacturing, and hybrid lattice structures are introduced into the lightweight design of the piston rod. In addition, additive manufacturing and topology optimization are incorporated to reduce the redundant material of the structural parts of the LLU. The mechanical properties of the actuator system are verified by numerical simulation and experiments, and the power density of the actuators is far greater than that of cheetah muscle. The mass of the optimized LLU is reduced by 24.5%, and the optimized LLU shows better response time performance when given a step signal, and presents a good trajectory tracking ability with the increase in motion frequency.

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Acknowledgements

The work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. U21A20124 and 52205059) and the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (No. 2022C01039).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Huaizhi Zong, Junhui Zhang, Lei Jiang, Kun Zhang, Jun Shen, Ke Wang & Bing Xu

  2. Unmanned Vehicle Research and Development Center, China North Vehicle Research Institute, Beijing, 100072, China

    Lei Jiang

  3. School of Mechatronic Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Zhenyu Lu

  4. Auclean High-Tech Ltd., Wuxi, 214108, China

    Yanli Wang

Authors
  1. Huaizhi Zong
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  2. Junhui Zhang
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  3. Lei Jiang
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  4. Kun Zhang
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  5. Jun Shen
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  6. Zhenyu Lu
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  7. Ke Wang
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  8. Yanli Wang
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  9. Bing Xu
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Contributions

Conceptualization contributed by HZZ and JHZ; methodology contributed by HZZ, LJ, and KZ; resources contributed by HZZ, KW, and YLW; validation contributed by HZZ and ZYL; writing—original draft contributed by HZZ; writing—review and editing contributed by HZZ and JS; supervision contributed by JHZ; funding acquisition contributed by JHZ, ZYL, and BX. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junhui Zhang.

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This study does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Zong, H., Zhang, J., Jiang, L. et al. Bionic lightweight design of limb leg units for hydraulic quadruped robots by additive manufacturing and topology optimization. Bio-des. Manuf. 7, 1–13 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-023-00256-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-023-00256-0

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