A novel mobile robot with a backbone for self up-righting capability

Inspired by ground mammals that can easily recover themselves from a lying-down state, mobile robots with a backbone are expected to present the same capability, which might be an additional feature for autonomous mobile robots on rough terrains or in unstable environments. In the paper, the authors present the implementation of an electrically powered mobile robot, SRR-II, which has three body-segments and a backbone with seven degrees of freedom as well. Judging from sensory data, the robot can recover itself from any initial position to the normal up-right position in less than 26 seconds, the only thing an operator has to do is a single click on the UGI. Details are given on joint layouts, system design considerations and the robot performance