Conceptual Design of the Combinable Legged Robot Bio-Inspired by Ants’ Structure
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Author,
Please see below comments/Suggestions -
- Abstract needs to be more clear and in-depth short version of the paper. Author should improve the abstract.
- Introduction needed more literature reviews. Please use below research papers as reference - a) Design, Mechanical Simulation and Implementation of a New Six Legged Robot b) Hardware Architecture Review of Swarm Robotics System: Self-Reconfigurability, Self-Reassembly, and Self-Replication c) Design, Simulation, Fabrication and Planning of Bio- Inspired Quadruped Robot d) Survey on decentralized modular swarm robots and control interfaces
- Reference 1 and 12 are the same.
- Please improve the conclusion section, add statements about the result finding and study too.
Author Response
Thank you for all the comments/suggestions. The amendment of the manuscript is listed and recorded as below.
Reviewer 1:
Comment 1: Abstract needs to be more clear and in-depth short version of the paper. Author should improve the abstract.
Answer: Thank you for the comment. It is updated with the following contents (in blue at line 1-10)
“ This study presents a new combinable multi-legged modular robot that mimics the structures of ants for expanding the physical capabilities of the legged robot. To do this, the robot design is focused on exploring a fusion of the two robotic platforms: modular and multi-legged, in which both the body frame and the legged structure are designed to be a rectangular prism and the 3-DoF sprawling- type articulated legs structure, respectively. In imitation of the ant's claws, the hook-link structure of the robot as the coupling mechanisms is proposed. This study includes the platform development and the experimental work for the locomotion in both single and combined mode are carried. The result of this study proves that the mimicking of ant structure into the proposed robot successfully enhances the capability of the conventional legged robot. It is feasible to be a use in the multi-robot system to realize the ant’s super-organized behavior in later.”
Comment 2 : Introduction needed more literature reviews. Please use below research papers as reference.
Answer: Thanks for the comments. these works are cited appropriately. The changes are written in blue at line 24-25:
“Ahmad et.al introduce a new six-legged robot which inspired from ant locomotion. [10] ”
- Ref [10] : Ahmad, G; Mahdieh, B; Ako, V. Design, Mechanical Simulation and Implementation of a New Six Legged Robot. arXiv:1902.035472020,cs.RO, 1–-8.
and line 32-35:
“Up to date, the previous researches have generally focused on mimicking the walking motion of ants with a variety type of walking gaits on uncertain terrain. [1, 13] Although there are many researches to implement the collaborative behavior of ant [5, 14, 15], the robot structure which enable it to implement the physical capability like the ant locomotion is not revealed yet.”
- Ref [13] : Shriyam, S.; Mishra, A.; Nayak, D. ; Thakur, A. Design, fabrication and gait planning of alligator-inspired robot. Int. J. Curr. Eng. Technol 2014,2, 567–575.
- Ref [14] : McCreery, H.F.; Breed, M.D. Cooperative transport in ants: a review of proximate mechanisms. Insect. Soc. 2006,61, 99-–110.
- Ref [15] : Madhav, P.; Tamer, A.; Tarek, S. Hardware architecture review of swarm robotic system: Self-reconfiguration, self-reassembly, and self-replication. ISRN Robotics2013,2013, 1-–11.
Comments 3: Reference 1 and 12 are the same.
Answer: Thanks for the comment. It is fixed.
Comments 4: Please improve the conclusion section, add statements about the result finding and study too.
Answer: Thanks for the comments and the conclusion is improved accordingly at line 248-255.
“ In this study, concept design of the combinable multi-leg modular robot that is inspired from ant’s structure has proposed. The functionality of the proposed robot is investigated in conducting the walking experiments in the single and combined mode as well as both designing the hook-link structure to connect between the individual robots. The imitation of ant structure into the proposed robot is validated in elevating the capability of the conventional legged robot. It is feasible to be used in the multi-robot system application by implementing the ant’s super-organized behavior. Mimicking the locomotion behavior of ant’s to the proposed robot is successfully verified with broadening the physical capability for combination action.”
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In this paper, the authors proposed a combinable legged robot inspired ant's structure. In particular, they focused on exploring a fusion of two robotic platforms using modular legged design and ants' cooperative behavior. The authors used a coupling mechanism based on a hook-like structure inspired by ants' claws. However, the article looks weak in terms of novelty. It requires a probably better understanding of why ants use collective and cooperative behavior approach for accomplishing the colonial tasks rather than using modularity in the robotic design.
Here are my major comments as follows,
- The proposed design of the robot is not novel, and on top of that, what the authors aim proposed through this article not clear. Legged robots have already been studied thoroughly since the 80s, and modularity has been utilized since early 2000, so the reviewer does not think any part of the work is novel enough for a journal article.
- This is the very strong claim " there are no researches on the robot design that is bio-inspired from the locomotion behaviors of animals behaving like the multi-function model of the ants" Ants collective behaviors are well studied and implemented as swarm robots. The proposed design shows combining two robots, which is not the principle in ants' cooperation behavior, and their morphology is six-legged robot locomotion. Please explain carefully.
- The introduction needs to be redone with more related papers on six-legged locomotion and ants swarming locomotion.
- Please add a video of single robot locomotion and combined locomotions.
- Why robot displacement has a sharp slope change, does it cause some instability during gait changes?
- Please plot Fig 11 and 12 in one set and show the combined leg angle variation.
- Finally, what is the prime objective of this combining of two robots?
- Please add a separate section of control methods and architecture.
- Please cite this work Shriyam, S., Mishra, A., Nayak, D. and Thakur, A., 2014. Design, fabrication and gait planning of alligator-inspired robot. Int. J. Curr. Eng. Technol, 2, pp.567-575.
Author Response
Thanks for reviewing my manuscript. All the comments are properly revised responding to the revision/comments as below:
Reviewer 2:
Comment 1: The proposed design of the robot is not novel, and on top of that, what the authors aim proposed through this article not clear. Legged robots have already been studied thoroughly since the 80s, and modularity has been utilized since early 2000, so the reviewer does not think any part of the work is novel enough for a journal article.
Answer: Thank you for the comments. These authors also agree that both the legged robot and modularity robot used have been studied thoroughly since the last century. However, this study focuses on exploring the capability improvement of the legged robot which can perform the physical combination among the modular robots. To do this, this study shows both the detail of the proposed design and the experiment result of walking motion for verifying the performance of the legged robot in the combining status together.
Comment 2: This is the very strong claim "there are no research on the robot design that is bio-inspired from the locomotion behaviors of animals behaving like the multi-function model of the ants". Ants collective behaviors are well studied and implemented as swarm robots. The proposed design shows combining two robots, which is not the principle in ants' cooperation behavior, and their morphology is six-legged robot locomotion. Please explain carefully.
Answer : The design concept in this study is to imitated the inspiration of the ant’s locomotion behavior into robotic system, which not only includes a special collaborative behavior, but also has the capability improvement of the locomotion behavior in physically combining among each individuals. Therefore, this study focuses on the locomotion behavior of ant, which enable it to perform physically combination among the individual ants, and the future research will further proceed to involve the collaborative behavior of ants.
Regarding the statement above, there is some correction at line 26-27:
“there are few research on the robot design that is bio-inspired from the hybrid behaviors of animals like the multi-functional mode of the ants”
Comment 3: The introduction needs to be redone with more related papers on six-legged locomotion and ants swarming locomotion.
Answer : Thanks for the comments. these works are cited appropriately. The changes are written in blue at line 24-25:
“Ahmad et.al introduce a new six-legged robot which inspired from ant locomotion. [10] ”
- Ref [10] : Ahmad, G; Mahdieh, B; Ako, V. Design, Mechanical Simulation and Implementation of a New Six Legged Robot. arXiv:1902.035472020,cs.RO, 1–-8.
and line 32-35:
“Up to date, the previous researches have generally focused on mimicking the walking motion of ants with a variety type of walking gaits on uncertain terrain. [1, 13] Although there are many researches to implement the collaborative behavior of ant [5, 14, 15], the robot structure which enable it to implement the physical capability like the ant locomotion is not revealed yet.”
- Ref [13] : Shriyam, S.; Mishra, A.; Nayak, D. ; Thakur, A. Design, fabrication and gait planning of alligator-inspired robot. Int. J. Curr. Eng. Technol 2014,2, 567–575.
- Ref [14] : McCreery, H.F.; Breed, M.D. Cooperative transport in ants: a review of proximate mechanisms. Insect. Soc. 2006,61, 99-–110.
- Ref [15] : Madhav, P.; Tamer, A.; Tarek, S. Hardware architecture review of swarm robotic system: Self-reconfiguration, self-reassembly, and self-replication. ISRN Robotics2013,2013, 1-–11.
Comment 4: Please add a video of single robot locomotion and combined locomotions.
Answer: Thank you for the comment. The videos will be included in the supplementary material section: Video S1:Single robot walking.mp4 and Video S2:Combine robot walking.mp4.
* the video is ready, but there is no submitting way to here. Regarding this, I would like to submit it as supplementary material together with my manuscript later.*
Comment 5: Why robot displacement has a sharp slope change, does it cause some instability during gait changes?
Answer:
Thank you for the comment and sorry for unclear expression. The result mentioned is not the displacement of the robot base, and it is the displacement of the foots trajectory from the x, y, and z-axis with referring to the robot base as the origin. This result is to present the sequence of the gait during the walking test. To make it clear, I fixed the caption of both the Figure 7 and Figure 9 as follows :
“Figure 7. Displacement of feet trajectory on the walking motion for a single robot along the (a) x-axis, (b)y-axis, and (c) z-axis.”
“Figure 9. Feet trajectory for two connected robots in walking together. Displacement of Feet trajectory of Robot 1 along the (a) x-axis, (b) y-axis, and (c) z-axis. Displacement of Feet trajectory of Robot 2 along the (d) x-axis, (e) y-axis, and (f) z-axis.”
Comment 6: Please plot Fig 11 and 12 in one set and show the combined leg angle variation.
Answer: Thank you for the comment. We add the modified as “side by side as in Figure 11. IMU result of robot 1 and 2 are presented in Figure 11 (a) and (b) respectively. The variation of the rotational angle are tabulated into the Table 2.”
Comment 7: Finally, what is the prime objective of this combining of two robots?
Answer: The prime objective of this combining of two robot is to mimic the physical combinable behavior of the legged robot, inspired from the ant structure. This statement is added in blue at line 37-38.
“With this point, this study focuses on the investigation on the physical combinable behavior of the legged robot that is inspired from the ant structure.”
Comment 8: Please add a separate section of control methods and architecture.
Answer: Thank you for the comment. These sections are divided into Section 2 (robot architecture) and Section 3 (robot control system). The latest allocation is described in the last paragraph of Section 1. It is rewritten in blue at line 41-45.
“The details of robot design is presented in Section 2. The control system of the proposed robots is described in Section 3. Basic locomotion in the experiment is explained in Section 4: the robot walking in single and in combined status. The result of the experimental data is tabulated and presented in Section 5. The result is discussed in Section 6.”
Comment 9: Please cite this work Shriyam, S., Mishra, A., Nayak, D. and Thakur, A., 2014. Design, fabrication and gait planning of alligator-inspired robot. Int. J. Curr. Eng. Technol, 2, pp.567-575.
Answer: Thanks for the suggestion, this work is cited appropriately in the line 32-33 as the reference.
“Up to date, the previous researches have generally focused on mimicking the walking motion of ants with a variety type of walking gaits on uncertain terrain. [1, 13]”
- Ref [13] : Shriyam, S.; Mishra, A.; Nayak, D. ; Thakur, A. Design, fabrication and gait planning of alligator-inspired robot. Int. J. Curr. Eng. Technol 2014,2, 567–575.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Please label Fig 5 and replace Fig 6 with better resolution images.
Author Response
Thanks for the review, the change is stated as in the attachment below.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
