FOOT DESIGN EVALUATION FOR A SIX-LEGGED WALKING ROBOT

The stability, velocity and energy efficiency of walking robots strongly depend on the quality of the established ground contact. Foothold planning is a good method to optimise the ground contact by selecting stable places to set the foot while walking in rough terrain. Besides the foothold, the design of the foot has great influence on the ground contact quality and therefore on the overall walking performance. In this paper we propose a set of basic design principles for feet of multi-legged robots. These design principles are evaluated with the six-legged walking robot LAURON by testing several different foot designs in various environments. The relevance of these proposed design principles is demonstrated by comparing the walking velocity and energy consumption in a series of experiments.