Energy-efficient walking over irregular terrain: a case of hexapod robot

Abstract

Adaptive locomotion over difficult or irregular terrain is considered as a superiority feature of walking robots over wheeled or tracked machines. However, safe foot positioning, body posture and stability, correct leg trajectory, and efficient path planning are a necessity for legged robots to overcome a variety of possible terrains and obstacles. Without these properties, any walking machine becomes useless. Energy consumption is one of the major problems for robots with a large number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF). When considering apathplanormovementparameterssuchasspeed,steplengthorstepheight,itisimportanttochoosethemost suitablevariablestosustainlongbatterylifeandtoreachtheobjectiveorcompletethetasksuccessfully.We changethesettingsofahexapodrobotlegtrajectoryforovercomingsmallterrainirregularitiesbyoptimizing consumedenergyandlegtrajectoryduringeachlegtransfer.Thetrajectorysettingsareimplementedas apartofhexapodrobotsimulationmodelandtestedthroughseriesofexperimentswithvariousterrains ofdifferingcomplexityandobstaclesofvarioussizes.Ourresultsshowthattheproposedenergy-efficient trajectorytransformationisaneffectivemethodforminimizingenergyconsumptionandimprovingoverall performance of a walking robot.