#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Frozen soil is widespread throughout the globe. The total area of permafrost is 25 percent of the Earth’s area. Water ice has also been found on the Moon, it mainly exists in permanently shadowed areas (craters), through which wheeled devices can pass with difficulty. The use of legged robots will be more relevant than ever for these purposes.
The mechanical legs, designed according to the principles of ungulate animal’s legs structure, have excellent adaptability and motor characteristics. In accordance with the natural selection laws, the structure of the animals’ legs has developed, best adapted to the environment.
In early 2024, a group of scientists from China published a paper in which they studied the kinematics of reindeer legs (seven eight-year-old males were selected from a breeding farm in the Chinese city of Genhe) and proposed a design for a biomimetic mechanical foot, reports goarctic.ru.
The reindeer is a typical polar nomadic animal, and its hooves allow animals to make long migrations in difficult conditions. In particular, their plantar fur plays an anti-slip role and can increase the area of contact with the ground when walking on frozen ground.
The structure of the new kinematic mechanical foot was designed taking into account the trajectories of the joints, the hooves’ size and the proportional relationships of their components.
Experiments using the robotic foot have shown that it is adaptive to three types of soil: frozen ground, ice and lunar soil containing water ice. The good load-bearing capacity of mechanical legs on frozen ground allows for increased traction, which makes it possible to use heavier attachments.
Robots with legs have high mobility and adaptability to the environment on ‘inconvenient’ surfaces because they contact the surface pointwise and have flexible limb structures. Thus, they can be used in exploration and transportation work in high-risk conditions for humans – where wheeled robots would be ineffective.
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Text: Polina Bardik, Photo: Olga Polyanskaya
