Fault-tolerant gait a quadruped robot with partially fault legs

Abstract

Legged robots have greater capability to traverse irregular terrains. However, one of the most common problems is the failure of the actuators when the robot is working in remote. Fault-tolerant gait about one fault actuator can be found. This paper proposes another algorithm for more than one fault actuators. The degree-of-freedoms (DOFs) of the robot body are divided into two parts: the major DOFs, which are critical in performing a gait; and secondary DOFs. The idea of the method is to find a proper kinematic resolution to perform major DOFs by controlling the secondary DOF of the robot. Simulations and experiments are presented here on a hydraulic quadruped robot.