Tactile sensing with servo drives feedback only for blind hexapod walking robot

Abstract

In this paper, we address the problem of traversing rough terrains with hexapod walking robots. Although there can be found several approaches to deal with the terrain complexity, the proposed approach is strictly focused on a minimalist and cheap sensor equipment without additional inertial and exteroceptive sensors. The main idea of the proposed approach is to consider only the feedback from the intelligent servo drives to detect the contact point of a leg with the surface. During the leg motion, a relation of the joint torque and difference of the current and required joint positions is utilized to emulate a dedicated tactile sensor and thus the only equipment needed are the robot actuators. The proposed approach has been experimentally verified in a series of scenarios where a regular motion gait does not allow the robot to traverse the terrain while the proposed detection method enables a smooth motion of the technically blind robot in rough terrains of various difficulty.