Hexapod Robot Design and Performance Comparison of Fuzzy and PID Control Methods

Abstract

In this study, a six-leg spider robot (hexapod) was designed and controlled for greenhouse, search and rescue operations and military applications. Solidworks design program was used in the design stage and Matlab Simulink program was used in the control stage of the robot. In the study, a motion trajectory was determined by interpolation technique for the robot and it was aimed to move on this trajectory. Proportional-Integral-Differential (PID) controller and Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) were used for the trajectory control of the robot. The robot walk movements were applied in both control types with motion on flat ground, motion on inclined ground, motion at different weights and different friction coefficients. In the analysis studies, the total weight of the robot was taken into consideration as 4kg. As a result of the analysis studies, it was observed that this robot, which was designed and analyzed, followed a trajectory defined by a mass of 4 kg with an error value of 1 mm on average. During the trajectory tracking, it was found that the Fuzzy controller performs better than the PID controller at the turning points of the reference trajectory curve of the robot.