Dynamic turning and running of a hexapod robot using a separated and laterally arranged two-leg model

Abstract

Abstract We report on the development of separated and laterally arranged two-leg (SLTL) models with/without differentiated leg properties and their use as the dynamic running and turning templates for a hexapod robot. The laterally arranged two-leg morphology enables differential driving for turning. The differentiable leg settings, such as stiffness, enables the model to adopt unbalanced leg arrangements of empirical legged gaits, such as a tripod gait, into consideration. The fixed-point motion of the model was utilized as the main methodology to plan dynamic running and turning, in which the plot of one-step distance versus period was constructed for the legs’ operation point selection and matching. The proposed methodology was experimentally validated using four indices: turning curvature, flight phase, motion stability, and energy efficiency. The experimental results show that the running robot using the SLTL model with differentiated leg stiffness has better energy efficiency than one without by 4%, while the latter model has identical performance to the original spring-loaded inverted pendulum model with rolling contact. As for turning, the robot using the SLTL models with/without differentiated leg stiffness can preserve dynamic turning in all experiments with turning curvatures up to 0.28 m − 1 and 0.30 m − 1 , respectively, 33 % and 43 % more than the robot using the original model-less phase-shift turning strategy ( 0.21   m − 1 ). Using the proposed model-based strategy, the flight phase of the robot turning in all curvatures (including straight running) maintains around 20%, the root-mean-squared (RMS) values of pitch and roll remains less than 3   deg , and the specific resistance ( S R ) is bounded between 0.64  and  0.73 . By contrast, the robot using the phase-shifting turning strategy can maintain dynamic motion up to a turning curvature of 0.21   m − 1 . A further increase in phase shifting not only does not increase the turning curvature but also changes the robot motion from running to walking. In this case, no flight phase exists, the S R jumps up significantly, and RMS values of pitch and roll also increase dramatically. In short, the experimental validation confirms the effectiveness of the proposed methodology for initiating the dynamic running and turning of the robot.