The Adelopod is a small two-armed tumbling robot developed by the University of Minnesota Center for Distributed Robotics. Tumbling is achieved through the use of two rigid arms that rotate about its body. Another degree of freedom is achieved by each arm by adjusting the plane in which that arm rotates.

Tumbling is a largely unexplored method of locomotion where the robot controls its orientation in order to achieve consecutive forward falls through its environment, thus producing net displacement. It is desirable for robotic locomotion for a number of reasons including inherent stability, high mobility, and low hardware complexity.

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Publications

Brett Hemes and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Frictional step climbing analysis of tumbling locomotion" IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2012

Brett Hemes, Dario Canelon, Justin Dancs and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Robotic Tumbling Locomotion" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2011

Brett Hemes and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "A New Modular Schema for the Control of Tumbling Robots" IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2009

Brett Hemes ,Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, Barry O'Brien "The Adelopod Tumbling Robot" IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2009

Brett Hemes, Duc Fehr, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Motion Primitives for a Tumbling Robot" IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2008