Khajeh Mahabadi, N.

Bio Inspired Salamander Robot:

As my final master thesis, I worked on “A Novel Design of a Salamander-Like Robot Based on 3D Skeleton Kinematics of Real Salamanders”. This project addressed the design and development of an amphibious salamander robot based on the 3D kinematic data obtained from the skeleton of a real salamander. The kinematic data was collected from recorded X-ray videos of the animal by manually tracking the videos. The data was later analyzed in Matlab to characterize the walking gait. An optimization problem was solved (also in Matlab) to find the optimal number and positions of the joints on the spine. According to the results, a model of the robot was designed in Solidworks and verified in Webots as the simulator. Finally the robot was constructed and controlled.

 

Here is the summary of the tasks:

  • Developing graphical user interface (GUI) mainly for data analysis in Matlab. This user friendly GUI enables the user to easily interact with the kinematic data gained from the real animal and to analyze and obtain any required information (e.g. calculation of angles, saving the generated kinematics, etc).
  • Solving a joint optimization problem (by Genetic algorithm) to determine the optimal number and also positions of the joints on the spine of the robot .In this stage the hindlimb model was also simplified.
  • Robot design in Solidworks (by “Konstantinos Karakasiliotis”) and then Robot development by 3D printing machine.
  • Simulating the model in Webots (by “Konstantinos Karakasiliotis”), hardware and simulation control (in C and C++ respectively) and solving inverse kinematic problem.

 



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