Abstract
Insects, in general, are agile creatures capable of navigating uneven and difficult terrain with ease. The leaf-cutter ants (Atta), specifically, are agile, social insects capable of navigating uneven and difficult terrain, manipulating objects in their environment, broadcasting messages to other leaf-cutter ants, performing collective tasks, and operating in cooperative manners with others of their kind [9][12]. These traits are desirable in a mobile robot. However, no robots have been developed that encompass all of these capabilities. As such, this research developed the Biologically-Inspired Legged-Locomotion Ant prototype (BILL-ANT-p) to fill the void. This paper discusses the features, development, and implementation of the BILL-Ant-p robot, quantifies its capabilities for use as a compliant mobile platform that is capable of object manipulation.
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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Lewinger, W.A., Branicky, M.S., Quinn, R.D. (2006). Insect-inspired, Actively Compliant Hexapod Capable of Object Manipulation. In: Tokhi, M.O., Virk, G.S., Hossain, M.A. (eds) Climbing and Walking Robots. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-26415-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-26415-9_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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