Fault tolerant locomotion of the hexapod robot

Abstract

We propose a scheme for fault detection and tolerance of the hexapod robot locomotion on even terrain. The fault stability margin is defined to represent potential stability which a gait can have in case a sudden fault event occurs to one leg. Based on the scheme, the fault tolerant quadruped periodic gaits of the hexapod walking over perfectly even terrain are derived. It is demonstrated that the derived quadruped gait is the optimal one which the hexapod can have maintaining fault stability margin nonnegative, and a geometric condition should be satisfied for the optimal locomotion. By this scheme, when one leg is in failure, the hexapod robot has the modified tripod gait to continue the optimal locomotion with one leg in failure.