Quad crawler robot navigation using animal walking gait

Abstract

In recent years, much interest in improving the stability of walking robot has motivated the researchers to investigate and understand the fundamental principles of biological animal gait locomotion. However, maintaining the stability of a robot is not easy as it seems, the main problem in developing walking robot is how the walking robot can obtain gait stability during walking and the workspace limitation. Studies are done to implement the biological aspects of animal into the robot kinematic design, leg configuration and control structures. This project is focused on the development of a novel class of crawler robot, which mimics the locomotion of four legged animal. The fundamental gait of lizard locomotion has been adopted as a basic concept of the developed quad crawler locomotion. The kinematics of the leg mechanism is developed and verified with simulation studies. The experimental studies are carried out to investigate the stability issues while walking and navigate in the environment. The experimental results are discussed and compared with the existing work.