Generating gaits for simultaneous locomotion and manipulation

Abstract

Modular robots can be rapidly reconfigured into customized articulated legged morphologies capable of mobile manipulation and inspection. However, current gait generation methods do not keep pace with the speed of physical reconfiguration. This work focuses on quickly creating gaits for modular legged robots. We build on a recent method that uses trajectory optimization to design quasi-static gaits given only robot geometry and foot contact patterns. We develop methods to automatically generate contact patterns for new gaits and transitions between them. We show the utility of these methods applied to robots with many limbs, such that limbs can be fluidly reassigned to locomotion, manipulation, or inspection tasks, or to adapt gaits to hardware failures online. We demonstrate gait and transition generation with our modular hexapod and dodecapod robots. The robots switch between gaits that use all limbs for locomotion and those that leave some limbs free to pick up objects or position a camera.