Design of the SCOUT II quadruped with preliminary stair-climbing

摘要

Mobile robots are taking an important role in society. They are being used in many industries from entertainment to space exploration. McGill University's Ambulatory Robotics Laboratory recently introduced a new class of quadruped robot---the SCOUT series. These robots feature only one actuated degree of freedom per leg. By keeping the degrees of freedom to a minimum, this class of robots is simpler, less expensive and more reliable than most legged robots built to date. The design and development of the second of these robots, SCOUT II, is the topic of this thesis. Unlike its predecessor SCOUT I, SCOUT II has unactuated prismatic knee joints in addition to the revolute joints, which allow compliant walking, stair-climbing and running gaits to be explored. SCOUT II is a self-contained, autonomous mobile robot whose primary purpose is to serve as the testbed for the various gaits that are being developed. This thesis describes the robot's mechanical design, electrical design, sensors and construction. A preliminary stair-climbing algorithm is developed and simulated. An attempt, though partially unsuccessful, is made to implement this algorithm on SCOUT II. The reasons for the discrepancies between the simulations and the actual system are outlined. This will provide useful insight on modelling parameters, actuator limits and robot dynamics for future stair-climbing, walking and running algorithms that are developed for SCOUT II.