Six-legged walking robot for inspection tasks

This piper presents an approach to the design and control of a reconfigurable walking robot. Based on biological inspiration a six-legged robot conception was proposed. In the first part the mechanical structure, basic kinematical and dynamical dependences of the robot legs are described. The structure, kinetics rules, gait patterns etc. are derived from typical stick insects. The body and the legs of the robot are designed and made according to the above assumptions. Eighteen DC servomotors with resistant encoders were used on the legs. In addition one DC servomotor on the robot head was introduced for sensors or a vision system. In the second part a control system is discussed. The control unit is based on the AVR Atmega8/16 microcontrollers which are responsible for generating movement trajectory and at the same time for controlling all the servomotors. For the proposed control system different gait algorithms and behaviour rules including a forward/back movement, and avoidice of obstacles are worked out. They allow the robot to work autonomously or to be operated by an operator with a remote control. In addition, during the walk the algorithms can match the type of attitudes and gaits to an environment. Next, some experiments of walking for different control algorithms are carried out and described. At the end some conclusions and the directions of further research are given.