The Gait of a Hexapod Robot and Its Obstacle-surmounting Capability

In this paper, we present a kind of an eccentric-type legged hexapod robot-ELHR, including its leg model, gait planning and obstacle-surmounting capability. It is a RHex-like robot, and is expected to across rough-terrain and operate in real-world tasks. This report describes just our preliminary works. Although ELHR uses the classical alternating tripod gait, control details still need to be resolved to adapt the eccentric-type legs. We discussed the leg model and the walking principle of ELHR firstly, and then built an experimental machine according to them. As expected, we found the eccentric-type legged robot has a good performance and could be controlled easily. Especially, we found it owns a high speed and an unexpected obstacle-surmounting capability that could surmount bricks easily. Also influences on the capability by the main parameters of the robot are discussed in the end of this paper.