Development of Multi-Legged Walking Robot Using Reconfigurable Modular Design and Biomimetic Control Architecture

Abstract

This paper focuses on the design of a modular multi-legged walking robot MiniQuad-I, which can be reconfigured into variety configurations, including quadruped and hexapod configurations for different tasks by changing the layout of modules. Critical design considerations when taking the adaptability, maintainability and extensibility in count simultaneously are discussed and then detailed designs of each module are presented. The biomimetic control architecture of MiniQuad-I is proposed, which can improve the capability of agility and independence of the robot. Simulations and experiments on crawling, object picking and obstacle avoiding are performed to verify functions of the MiniQuad-I.