Six-Legged Walking Robot for Inspection Tasks

Abstract

In the paper an approach to design and control of reconfigurable walking robots is presented. Based on the biological inspiration the conception of the six-legged robot is proposed. In the first part a mechanical structure, basic kinematical and dynamical dependences in the robot legs are described. The structure, kinetics rules, gait patterns etc. are derived from typical stick insects. According to the above assumptions the body and the legs of the robot are designed and made. At all legs eighteen DC servomotors with resistant encoders are used. In addition at the robot head one DC servomotor for sensors or a vision system is introduced. In the second part a control system is discussed. The multi-level control unit is based on the AVR Atmega8/16 microcontrollers which are responsible for generating of a movement trajectory and at the same time for controlling of the all servomotors. For the proposed control system different gait algorithms and behaviour rules including a forward/back movement, avoiding of obstacles are worked out. They allow an autonomous work of the robot or remote control by an operator. In addition, during the walk the algorithms can match the type of attitudes and gaits to an environment. Next, some experiments of walking for different control algorithms are carried out and described. At the end some conclusions and directions of the further research are given.