A Novel Low-Cost Quadruped Robot with Joint Fault-Tolerant Control

Abstract

The quadruped robots among legged robots have been developed for scientific research and human life due to the better-complicated terrain adaptability. A novel quadruped robot designed with low cost and low energy consumption is proposed in this work, and each leg is actuated by direct drive servos. The three degrees of freedom leg kinematics are calculated, and the trotting gait algorithm is adopted to make the robot capable of walking. Under complex tasks, the multi-joint and multi-degree-of-freedom drive of the robot mean potential failures. A fault-tolerant control strategy for the joint stick is adopted, maintaining part of workability when the fault occurs. The walking experiment has confirmed that when the quadruped robot joint faults, it can still work with the performance degradation. Therefore, the robot has higher reliability and fault tolerance to complete complex tasks and explore extraterrestrial planets instead of wheeled vehicles.