China’s award-winning ‘Transformer’ robot is much more than meets the eye

[Nan Yang]

China’s award-winning ‘Transformer’ robot is much more than meets the eye

• International recognition for Chinese designers of ‘Origaker’, a bio-like robot that mimics animal movements
• Inspired by nature, the metamorphic mechanism flips, spins, creeps and crawls to adapt to its environment

Zhang Tong
Published: 8:00pm, 17 Sep, 2023

A research team in China has won an international award for its exceptional work on a robot that can mimic the way various animals walk.

The robot, named Origaker, can change its shape to simulate the movement of various types of reptiles, mammals and even arthropods within a single mechanical structure.

The mechanism was designed by a team led by Dai Jiansheng from Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the Southern University of Science and Technology.

The team was awarded the 2022 Best Journal Paper prize by the editor and editorial board of Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, a top journal in the field, on September 5, for their research describing the design and implementation of the robot.

The paper was chosen from more than 100 manuscripts, representing the most innovative and influential research results in the field. Dai’s paper scored highest among the six assessed categories: scientific frontier, degree of innovation, theoretical height, method design, experimental results and paper writing.

“[The paper made an] outstanding contribution to the field of mechanisms and robotics,” said the journal’s editor-in-chief, Venkat Krovi, a professor at Clemson University in South Carolina.

That contribution was Dai’s innovative theory on metamorphic mechanisms, which allows the robot to switch working modes and mimic the movements of different animals.

Dai, who said he had been inspired by learning about the division and recombination of human cells, proposed the theory more than 20 year ago. The team has now built a theoretical system that incorporates mathematical tools.

A sketch shows two possible configurations associated with the movements of the bio-like robot Origaker. Graphic: Professor Dai Jiansheng

Most advanced robots are designed with a rigid trunk, similar to the way satellite antennas and solar panels extend from a core structure in the aerospace field. Those devices change shape during deployment, but stay fixed afterward. A metamorphic robot, however, can keep transforming.

Origaker, a biomimetic robot, consists of a trunk and four identical legs. By rotating those body parts, Origaker can change its gait and working modes according to different terrain, and can pitch vertically or twist horizontally.

“Indoor and outdoor experiments were carried out to validate the superior adaptability and locomotivity of the robot,” said Tang Zhao, the paper’s first author.

“The robot can crawl over various surfaces, execute designed gaits on different terrains and conquer challenging obstacles.”

The team tested the robot on a series of objectives including self-flipping, fast spinning and stair climbing. It was able to pass through narrow paths, conduct quarter turns, move across soft grass or sandy terrain and climb over rocks.

“In the form of reptiles, it has good omnidirectional movement performance; in the form of arthropods, it is more suitable for climbing over vertical obstacles; in the form of mammals, it can pass through relatively narrow passages,” a report by China Science Daily said on Friday.

“The results have laid a solid foundation for the future development of more advanced next-generation biological metamorphic robots and their control algorithms,” the China Science Daily report said.

“The results have laid a solid foundation for the future development of more advanced next-generation biological metamorphic robots and their control algorithms,” according to the China Science Daily report.