A Three-Legged Reconfigurable Spherical Robot No.3

Abstract

A three-legged reconfigurable spherical robot No.3 is presented in this paper. The robot has three legs kept inside the two half hemispherical shells. The three legs can be extended by splitting the top half of the hemispherical shells using a linear actuator installed at the core of the spherical shape. Each leg is consisted of three of revolute joints. When three legs are on ground the robot can perform three legs crawl-kick walking gait (one leg in front and two legs in rear) and butterfly walking gait (two legs in front and one leg in rear). The robot is able to move on flat ground and get over small barrier with butterfly walking gait with the speed of 5.33 cm/s and 1.57 cm/s respectively. For crawl-kick walking gait, the robot can move a little faster with the speed of 6.15 cm/s on flat ground and 1.51 cm/s for crossing barrier.