Research: Galloping Robots

I recently completed a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at McGill's Centre for Intelligent Machines. My research at McGill dealt with running robots -- specifically the Scout II and PAW robot -- in the Ambulatory Robotics Lab (archived) and Mechatronic Locomotion Lab. Inna Sharf and Martin Buehler (now at Boston Dynamics) co-supervised my work.

As of September 2006 I have started doing post-doctoral research in Andre Seyfarth's Lauflabor locomotion lab in Jena, Germany. At the Lauflabor I am working on the control of a bipedal robot, the Jena Walker II.

James and McGill's Scout II Robot

My primary research at McGill research centered around running gaits such as galloping and bounding on fixed-toe and hybrid wheeled-leg robots. In January, 2003, I succeeded in making Scout II gallop. This was the first time that galloping has been demonstrated on a robot. The results were presented at the AMAM 2003 conference in Kyoto, Japan. (video of the trip) A little bit more about my work can be found in a McGill Reporter article ( original), as well as on Slashdot and on Robots.Net.

A sample of recent publications can be found here.

The PAW robot. (video)

Videos of these robots are available here. Rotary Gallop (Jan 24, 2003), Half-Bound (Jan 22, 2003), Bounding (1), Bounding (2). Other videos: National Geographic: Science Times video about bio-inspired robots. Interesting footage includes discussions by Bob Full and Dave McMordie's pronking implementation on RHex.

Details regarding my prior work on the Scorpion Robot can be found on my my Scorpion webpage. There is also an Official Scorpion Webpage. The primary investigator is Frank Kirchner.

The Scorpion Robot. (Click on the image for an AVI video)

In January, 2001, I finished my MSc. ECE at the Advanced Robotics and Teleoperation Lab at the University of Alberta. There, along with my friends in the SAGV (sponsored by Schlumberger WesternGeco (then Geco-Prakla) and Canada's Dept. of National Defence) and ARVP teams I worked on the Polar Bear robot, a 400 kg outdoor mobile robot.

My MSc. ECE thesis (2001, University of Alberta), entitled "A Tracking System for a Seismic Surveying Mobile Robot" is available for download.

Polar Bear Videos: a video is available of the Polar Bear robot during trials in 1999. It's a zip'd 45 MB file: following people for the first time.