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MEVIUS2: Practical Open-Source Quadruped Robot with Sheet Metal Welding and Multimodal Perception

Kento Kawaharazuka, Keita Yoneda, Shintaro Inoue, Temma Suzuki, Jun Oda, Kei Okada

Abstract

Various quadruped robots have been developed to date, and thanks to reinforcement learning, they are now capable of traversing diverse types of rough terrain. In parallel, there is a growing trend of releasing these robot designs as open-source, enabling researchers to freely build and modify robots themselves. However, most existing open-source quadruped robots have been designed with 3D printing in mind, resulting in structurally fragile systems that do not scale well in size, leading to the construction of relatively small robots. Although a few open-source quadruped robots constructed with metal components exist, they still tend to be small in size and lack multimodal sensors for perception, making them less practical. In this study, we developed MEVIUS2, an open-source quadruped robot with a size comparable to Boston Dynamics' Spot, whose structural components can all be ordered through e-commerce services. By leveraging sheet metal welding and metal machining, we achieved a large, highly durable body structure while reducing the number of individual parts. Furthermore, by integrating sensors such as LiDARs and a high dynamic range camera, the robot is capable of detailed perception of its surroundings, making it more practical than previous open-source quadruped robots. We experimentally validated that MEVIUS2 can traverse various types of rough terrain and demonstrated its environmental perception capabilities. All hardware, software, and training environments can be obtained from Supplementary Materials or https://github.com/haraduka/mevius2.

MEVIUS2: Practical Open-Source Quadruped Robot with Sheet Metal Welding and Multimodal Perception

Abstract

Various quadruped robots have been developed to date, and thanks to reinforcement learning, they are now capable of traversing diverse types of rough terrain. In parallel, there is a growing trend of releasing these robot designs as open-source, enabling researchers to freely build and modify robots themselves. However, most existing open-source quadruped robots have been designed with 3D printing in mind, resulting in structurally fragile systems that do not scale well in size, leading to the construction of relatively small robots. Although a few open-source quadruped robots constructed with metal components exist, they still tend to be small in size and lack multimodal sensors for perception, making them less practical. In this study, we developed MEVIUS2, an open-source quadruped robot with a size comparable to Boston Dynamics' Spot, whose structural components can all be ordered through e-commerce services. By leveraging sheet metal welding and metal machining, we achieved a large, highly durable body structure while reducing the number of individual parts. Furthermore, by integrating sensors such as LiDARs and a high dynamic range camera, the robot is capable of detailed perception of its surroundings, making it more practical than previous open-source quadruped robots. We experimentally validated that MEVIUS2 can traverse various types of rough terrain and demonstrated its environmental perception capabilities. All hardware, software, and training environments can be obtained from Supplementary Materials or https://github.com/haraduka/mevius2.
Paper Structure (12 sections, 8 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 12 sections, 8 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. Design and Configuration of MEVIUS2
  3. Design Overview of MEVIUS2
  4. Comparison with Existing Quadruped Robots
  5. Circuit Configuration of MEVIUS2
  6. Control Architecture of MEVIUS2
  7. Experiments
  8. CONCLUSION
  9. Overview
  10. Hardware
  11. Software
  12. Limitations

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: MEVIUS2 -- Practical open-source quadruped robot with sheet metal welding and multimodal perception, developed in this study.
  • Figure 2: Design overview of MEVIUS2: excluding mirrored parts, the robot consists of 16 unique metal components, three of which are fabricated using sheet metal welding to achieve complex and large geometries as single integrated parts.
  • Figure 3: All metal components used in MEVIUS2.
  • Figure 4: Details of sheet metal welding for the Base-Link and Hip-Link. The welded sections are highlighted in red.
  • Figure 5: The sensor configuration of MEVIUS2.
  • ...and 3 more figures