Meet the LittleDog Robot

LittleDog, a project developed by multiple campuses, is putting robotics to the test. LittleDog came from the project BigDog, and researchers are looking into developing efficient and effective robotic legs and applying theories and advanced robotics to LittleDog.

LittleDog is a robot designed for research on learning “locomotion”. Scientists at leading institutions use LittleDog to explore the relationships among motor learning, dynamic control, perception of the environment, and rough-terrain locomotion. LittleDog is used at many campuses, such as: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and USC as part of a program focused on advanced robotics.

LittleDog has four legs, and each leg is powered by three electric motors. The legs have a large range of motion. The robot is strong enough for climbing, as well as tackling rocky terrain. Boston Dynamics has a video of here of the robot combating many obstacles and demonstrating what the LittleDog can do.

In the robot, there is a computer that does sensing, actuator control and communications. LittleDog’s sensors measure joint angles, motor currents, body orientation and foot/ground contact.

“One of the LittleDog competition’s biggest challenges has been improving on the original software so that the robot can read any map and then navigate the map’s terrain”, says Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute research scientist Drew Bagnell.”There’s a blind component to the test,” he adds. “We get tested on terrain that we’ve never seen nor will ever see.”

LittleDog’s research teams are focusing on develop algorithms that manage each leg. “People have been talking about legged vehicles since the 1960s but they didn’t have good algorithms to make the work,” Bagnell says. “If you know that every step is going to be a repeat of the previous step, it’s not that hard-but when you get to unstructured environments, that’s where things fall apart.”