Posture Estimation and Trajectory Tracking for SQuRo: a Small-sized Quadruped Robotic Rat

Abstract

Large quadruped robots have shown high environmental adaptability and promising applications. However, due to the difficulty of integrating multiple sensors or highperformance CPU in such a limited dimension, which strongly hindered the perception and calculation ability, quadruped robots in small scale haven’t shown equally performance. To overcome this limitation, we integrated the inertial measurement unit (IMU) into the small-sized robotic rat SQuRo, and proposed simplified control strategies to enhance its robustness. The improvements includes three parts: 1) A posture control strategy is proposed and verified by posture adjustment in a slope test; 2) Straight line tracking was achieved by detecting and controlling the yaw angle of SQuRo; 3) The autonomous fall recovery was achieved by detecting the fall and executed a predefined fall recovery strategy.