Design and Development of a Structurally Stable Quadruped Robot for Surveillance

Quadrupeds have the ability to access diverse environment where other living creatures and humans can't go in a very effective way. Their such attributes are taken into consideration and used into this project to develop a quadruped robot with the abilities to have various kind of motions like to transverse different terrains in all directions along with ascending and descending motions over obstacles. The major weight contributing factor of a mobile robot is the actuation system, thus appropriate numbers of actuators should be used, hence challenging to minimize the weight of the bot. Mechanism here emulates the locomotive motion of the usual quadrupeds with reduced number of actuators which in turn reduces both weight and cost. The number of actuators is reduced by performing a Von Mises Static structural analysis so that the mechanism performs the desired motion without any constraint. The material used for designing the quadruped robot is Nylon 6,6 and using finite element analysis the effect of loading on material strength has been investigated. The quadruped is loaded with varying load to calculate the variations produced in the stresses, strain and deflection in the robot for various walking configurations of quadruped and the results are plotted accordingly. Different types of gait motions are also studied to get a stable walking motion for the quadruped.