Arachnid-inspired kinesthesia for legged robots

In this paper we investigate the use of a biologically inspired kinesthesia organ from the arthropod family as a way to allow estimation of the leg positions of a mobile legged robot. Such an extra sense would serve the same purpose it does in biological equivalents. The lyriform organ of the arachnids is used as the particular model for such a biologically inspired organ (sensillum). A control design and finite element analysis of the resulting structure shows the ability of decoding the leg position from data sensed from sensilla integrated into the surface of a robot´s main structure. A method for constructing such a robotic equivalent to a lyriform organ is demonstrated using a 3D printing technique.