PERFORMANCE OF THE ADAPTIVE GAIT FOR THE LEG-WHEEL ROBOT, RT-MOVER

We have developed a robot,called RT-Mover, which shows adequate mobility performance on targeted types of rough terrain.It has four drivable wheels and two leg-like axles but only five active shafts.A strength of this robot is that it realizes both a leg mode and a wheel mode in a simple mechanism.We are now researching and developing an adaptive gait algorithm targeting terrain on which random areas of raised terrain exists.In"adaptive gait" only the wheel in contact with the raised terrain performs a leg motion and movement continues. In this research,we numerically analyzed the range of raised terrain which can be traversed using adaptive gait, and verified movement ability through experimentation.From those results,we have found that adaptive gait allows motion from an arbitrary posture in an environment with arbitrarily positioned raised terrain if the height of the terrainis within about 0.1[m].