Design and Comparative Analysis of 1D Hopping Robots Hopping is a highly dynamic motion requiring precise input over brief moments of ground contact in order to achieve desired performance. While this problem has been approached from multiple perspectives, this work provides a comparative analysis of two robot models. The first model uses an actuator to store energy in a spring and release it during the ground phase, while the second uses an actuator to move an additional mass vertically to generate force on the spring. In the first model, analytic expressions are used to find the desired controllers, while trajectory optimization is used in the latter. Orbital stability of each model under the conditions of uncertain damping and poor estimation of the hop height is examined. To this end, Poincare analysis is used to give a metric of stability in the presence of different initial conditions and parameter uncertainty. Simulations show that the first model converges quickly to a point near the desired height determined by the amount of uncertain damping present. The second model is less robust to uncertainty, but is be made to converge to a desired height with the addition of PD control around the optimal trajectory. This robustness is improved with different gains in the controller. In experiments performed on hardware for the second model, stability is observed through convergence to a periodic orbit within several hops.

Seeking the Analytical Approximation of the Stance Dynamics of the 3D SpringLoaded Inverted Pendulum Model By Using Perturbation Approach The SpringLoaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) has been widely exploited in both biomechanical and robotics research due to its simple form in mathematics and high accuracy in fitting experimental biology data. However the intrinsic nonlinearity of the SLIP dynamics makes accurate analytical representation unavailable. Traditional methods take advantage of numerical integration to handle this issue while several existing analytical approximations focusing on 2DSLIP model. The 3DSLIP suitable to physical reality is rarely investigated. This paper presents a novel perturbationbased approach to obtain the closedform analytical approximations of the 3DSLIP model in stance phase. In contrast to existing work ignoring the gravitational forces, the proposed approach just relies on assumptions of small leg compression and small leg swept angle. The performance of the derived approximations has been evaluated via comprehensive numerical analysis. The quality of accurate apex prediction promises the approximation as an advantageous and reliable tool for locomotion control of legged robots.