Capturing Motion,
Crafting Stories

China is located in the southeast of the Eurasian continent, between the Pacific ring seismic belt and the Eurasian seismic belt. In recent years, earthquakes in Wenchuan, Beichuan, Ya 'an and Yushu of Qinghai have caused a large number of casualties. As the disaster area is often a piece of debris, the road is bad for walking, despite the intervention of rescue teams, some of the timely rescue equipment to save the lives of the dying, due to the large size and weight, need more human handling, it is still difficult to bring into the scene.

However, robot can solve this problem for people. In the early 21st century, Boston dynamics developed the Big Dog, a Hexapod Robot specially designed for the military. It can carry heavy loads of goods while climbing mountains and wading in water, and can run faster than humans. The "Big Dog" robot has a built-in computer that can adjust its posture according to its environment. It can be guided by a set course or operated remotely, making it of great military and disaster relief significance.

And our domestic researchers are not far behind. Now, led by Gao Feng, a team from the research center for intelligent walking robot at Shanghai Jiao Tong university is working on Hexapod Robot. The team mainly analyzed the interaction and gait of the Hexapod Robot in different environments, and established the path planning, adaptive control, stability determination and data coordination between the legs of the robotics on and off the stairs. In the research process, the Hexapod Robot to be calibrated and adjusted. The team eventually opted for the NOKOV optical 3D motion capture system, which is expected to perform accurate calibration data acquisition.

In a space of 9 meters long and 6 meters wide, 8 Mars 2H motion capture cameras were set up. By capturing the markers on the joints of the robot's "trunk" and "limbs", the movement of the robotics was collected at a sampling frequency of 60HZ, and the three-dimensional coordinates of each marker were obtained. These data can be broadcast in a real-time way. With the SDK provided by the motion capture system, the robot team can conduct secondary development to conduct real-time analysis and feedback, so as to confirm the posture of each foot of the hexapod robotics, realize the calibration and adjustment of each foot and the movement coordination between each leg.

Now in addition to the team, Shandong University, Tianjin university and other universities are also using motion-capture systems to conduct experiments related to the control analysis of Hexapod Robot. It is hoped that the motion-capture system can provide support for more teams and contribute to the research of domestic Hexapod Robot.