Guinea fowl Jumping Robot with Balance Control Mechanism: Modeling, simulation, and experiment results Recently, diverse research has actively been conducted to control the posture of jumping robots using an inertial tail mechanism. However, the inertial tail mechanism has a high probability of collision with obstacles. In this study, a momentum wheel mechanism is proposed to achieve the same attitude control performance while reducing the volume occupied by the inertial tail mechanism. To verify the performance of the momentum wheel mechanism, we proposed a jumping robot with a momentum wheel mechanism and performed a dynamic analysis, simulation, and experiments on a jumping robot with a momentum wheel mechanism. In addition, it has been demonstrated that the momentum wheel mechanism can contribute to control of the body angle of the jumping robot. As a result, the momentum wheel mechanism can enhance the stability of the jumping robot more than the tail mechanism, and the momentum wheel mechanism contributes to the attitude control of the body angle, which allows the jumping robot to perform continuous jumping.

Study on SelfTakeoff of a Flapping Robot without Running: Influence of the Initial Pitch Angle on the Takeoff Trajectory Recently, research on flapping robots inspired by the behavior of insects and birds has become a focus of attention in the fields of robotics and biomimetics. However, most flapping robots require an operator or an assistance device to take off. The goal of this study was to develop a flapping robot that can achieve selftakeoff without running and can be used like a drone. This paper describes the development and evaluation of the flapping robot developed with this aim. The developed robot can generate a thrust that exceeds its own weight with a simple flapping mechanism and a lightweight design. The airspeed was simulated using the thrust measured with a force sensor and the resistance coefficient estimated in a gliding experiment, and it was found to exceed the minimum airspeed required to achieve takeoff 0.3 s from the onset of flapping. The result of the takeoff experiment demonstrated that takeoff was possible if the initial pitch angle was high. However, the pitch angle decreased immediately after takeoff due to the pitching moment generated by the flapping motion. The moment on the tail wing was not enough for the robot to maintain a horizontal posture at low airspeeds during takeoff. It was concluded that the robot requires a control mechanism for the pitching moment generated by the flapping motion andor accelerators that function without flapping during takeoff, such as hind limbs. Therefore, the parameters required for the design of actuated hind limbs were estimated.