Is Legged Locomotion Almost Smooth?

Shai Revzen, G Council, M Kvalheim

Dynamic Walking, no. 446, 2019

Abstract

Hexapods stand out among legged systems in their stability over unstructured terrain. We have recently discovered that slipping is a routine part of cockroach locomotion,[1] as well as showing that some robotic hexapods can noticeably improve performance by including gaits with slipping. The nonnegligible slipping challenges conventional mechanical analysis and simulation tools locomotion. The indeterminacy of inter-leg force distribution and the combinatorial complexities of possible contact states also result in unreliable motion planning. Our group has found a highly simplified model for friction dominated multi-legged locomotion which produces unexpectedly good motion predictions. Because experimental data on ground contact forces of hexapods is scarce, we designed a hexapedal robot platform equipped with Force/Torque (F/T) transducers and intended to produce the data needed to study why our model was successful. Here we present this robot’s mechanics and some preliminary force data collected with it.

BibTeX

@conference{revzen-2019-dw,
  author = {Revzen, Shai and Council, G and Kvalheim, M},
  title = {Is Legged Locomotion Almost Smooth?},
  booktitle = {Dynamic Walking},
  year = {2019},
  number = {446},
  address = {Canmore AB, CA},
  month = jun,
  organization = {Dynamic Walking},
  url = {https://docs.google.com/document/d/155IGklc5VWjCga3UaZyJ66UeFiV2_94IlAl5AmnqK7Y/view},
}