Quasi-periodic Gaits in Multi-legged Robots

Abstract

This paper studies quasi-periodic gaits of multi-legged robot locomotion systems based on the analysis of the dynamic model. The purpose is to determine the suystem performance during walking and the best strategy to overcome an obstacle. For that objective the robot prescribed motion is characterized in terms of several locomotion and obstacle variables. In this perspective, we formulate three performance measures of the walking robot namely, the mean absolute power, the mean power lost in the joint actuators and the mean force of the interface body-legs per walking distance. A set of model-based experiments reveals the influence of the obstacle position and dimension in the proposed indices.