Woa-fism planning hexapod robot various gaits

Abstract

Compared to wheeled and tracked robots, hexapod robots have higher adaptability and higher flexibility in complex terrains. With various gaits, hexapod robots can fulfill different needs better. Existing researches mainly focused on three common gaits, they are single-leg swing gait, wave gait, and tripod gait. Instead of directly planning gaits with swarm intelligence algorithms (SIA), a gait planning method for hexapod robots named finite incremental state machine (FISM) is proposed. FISM focuses on four incremental states between two adjacent gaits of the robot, which greatly reduces the complexity of the gait planning algorithm so that gait planning with SIA is simplified to set the optimal transfer conditions of FISM. In addition, after comparing five optimization algorithms, the whale optimization algorithm (WOA) can set the optimal transfer conditions of FISM. The computer simulation shows WOA-FISM can plan various gaits, finally, a real robot test verifies the effectiveness of various gaits.