MANTIS

MANTIS is a multi-legged robot with six extremities. The system was developed as a platform for interdisciplinary research in the area of mobile manipulation with multi-legged robots. To fulfill a variety of different tasks the robot is capable of operating in two different postures. In the manipulation posture MANTIS uses the four rear legs for locomotion and the two front legs for manipulation. Furthermore, in the locomotion posture the robot walks on all six extremities, which is a big advantage in difficult terrain. This flexibility allows to solve complex scenarios with only one system. Several software components as well as planning methods can be evaluated within such scenarios.

MANTIS is designed as an autonomous system with an integrated power source, a Mini ITX computer and the DFKI ZynqBrain which serves as central control unit for the robot as well as several FPGA-processing units and microcontrollers distributed across the robot are used for decentralized data pre-processing and control of subsystems. For the purpose of perception, the robot is equipped with pressure sensors in the sole of each foot, tactile sensor arrays in the fingers, a stereo camera system, a scanning laser range finder and inertial measurement units in the head and abdomen. The system is furthermore equipped with current, voltage, temperature, acceleration, position, force and torque sensors to monitor the internal status.

The robot MANTIS is being developed within the project LIMES. This research aims to generate and optimize different locomotion behaviors for different situations. Machine learning methods are used to learn different behaviors which are tested in the simulation environment MARS and evaluated afterwards on the real system. The acquired set of locomotion behaviors is used and adjusted one the real system to adapt to the current environment and tasks.

In the project BesMan, the system is used to study two-arm manipulation behaviors, which were generated by the use of new methods for imitation learning.

In the D-Rock project, MANTIS will be used as a reference system to demonstrate the capabilities of a model-based development approach developed in the project. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this model-based approach the robot will be used to solve a DARPA Robotic Challenge scenario.