A study of arbitrary gait pattern generation for turning of a bio-inspired hexapod robot

Constant radius turning pattern can be extended into an omnidirectional movement, while it is inefficient to build different control algorithm when the robot chooses different gaits. So in order to simplify the process of gait generation and extend several typical gaits into arbitrary gaits during turning of a bioinspired hexapod robot, taking insect gait as inspiration, an arbitrary gait pattern generation algorithm is proposed. These gait patterns are planned through adjusting the swing phase and support phase of each leg according to the features of different gaits, which is only controlled by gait coefficient. This algorithm can not only greatly expand the gait patterns of turning, but also reduce the difficulty of planning. In addition, the maximal turning angle under different turning radiuses is calculated by the geometric constraint and stability margin condition. A series of tests are carried out to validate the algorithm. The results show that the proposed method is effective and have good performance on stability of the robot, which provides the basis for subsequent research of avoiding obstacles and autonomous locomotion. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.