FastRunner

FastRunner is a new bipedal platform inspired from the fastest biped animals, and developed at IHMC. A novel leg design is being developed to enable FastRunner to achieve unprecedented efficiency and speed while being self-stabilizing. The FastRunner project is funded by the DARPA agency through the Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program.





The Team:

The FastRunner project is led by IHMC under the supervision of Dr. Jerry Pratt. His team is currently designing, simulating and building the FastRunner using physics-based control approaches. As a subcontractor, a team from the MIT, led by Pr. Russ Tedrake, is also involved in this project by developing robust non-linear control approaches. The FastRunner team has extensive knowledge and experience in the design, construction, control, and optimization of legged and other underactuated systems.


The IHMC team:

  • Jerry Pratt, Research Scientist, IHMC Team leader,
  • Sebastien Cotton, Research Scientist, Project Manager, Leads the modeling, simulation and control efforts,
  • Ionut Olaru, Research Associate, Leads the mechanical design efforts,
  • Jonhny Godowski, Research Associate, Idea originator and ostrich investigator,
  • Chris Schmidt Wetekam, Research Scientist, Mechanical design,
  • Nick Payton, Research Associate, Mechanical design,
  • Matt Bellman, Graduate Student, Intern on control aspects,
  • Tim van der Ven, Graduate Student, Intern on simulation aspects,
  • Nick Oren, Graduate Student, Intern on mechanical design,
  • Matthew Rosen, Graduate Student, Intern on mechanical design,
  • Brandon Pennington, Undergraduate Student, Intern on mechanical design,

The MIT team:

  • Russ Tedrake, Associate Professor, MIT Team leader,
  • Ian Manchester, Research Scientist working on Controls,
  • Frank Permenter, Graduate student working on Controls,
  • Michael Posa, Graduate student working on Controls,
  • Hongkai Dai, Graduate student working on Controls,
  • Paula Countouris, Undergraduate student working Mechanical Design,
  • Ryuma Niiyama, Postdoc on Mechanical Design.

IHMC TeamFrom the left to the right: Jerry Pratt, Johnny Godowski, Sebastien Cotton, Ionut Olaru



Objectives and Progress:

The goals of the first phase of this project will focus on running only in the sagittal plane. The milestones include:

  • Demonstrating feasibility with a physically realistic simulation of FastRunner running at 20mph on flat ground and running at 10mph on a moderately rough terrain.
  • Single leg prototype with performance matching simulation results and demonstrating that the full robot design is feasible.
  • Full planar FastRunner capable of running at 20 mph.

Simulation:

  • Fast: FastRunner is reaching 22mph from stop in less than 6s.
  • Efficient: FastRunner has a cost of transport about 1.3 while running at 20mph.
  • Self-Stabilizing: The running cycle is stable without global state control feedback. FastRunner recovers from small step down disturbances and is capable of running over gentle slopes.

Hardware:

  • 70% of the mechanical design is completed.
  • One full scale leg has been machined with rapid prototyping techniques.

Open Source Simulation:

One of the important aspects of this project is to release an open source simulation of the FastRunner.

Instructions and multi-platform downloads are provided through the following link:

Source Code


Mechanical Design:

The current mechanical design progress and solidworks files can be found through the following link:

   
   

For more information on FastRunner, please contact robot@ihmc.us