Infrastructure Development for Mathematical Modeling the Mechanics of Legged Locomotion

Legged locomotion of robotic systems on natural or man-made terrain is a complex, hybrid dynamics phenomenon. Effective design and control of these robots requires mathematical understanding of the system dynamics and exploration over a large design space for feasible design solutions. We are working on the development of a high-fidelity, multi-resolution mathematical modeling infrastructure to study the mechanics of legged locomotion. In this paper, we report some of the recent developments made in our effort. We report the implementation of (i) a multi-rigid body dynamics simulator based on cutting edge algorithms in computational multibody dynamics, (ii) a visualization engine that integrates with the dynamics simulator for real-time visualization of the CAD parts of generic multibody systems, (iii) integration and functionality of the coupled entity of the dynamics simulator and the visualization engine as a stand alone application and (iv) our investigations into massively parallel granular media modeling for ab-initio modeling of the contact mechanics of mobility platforms interacting with natural terrain.