WalkingBot: Modular Interactive Legged Robot with Automated Structure Sensing and Motion Planning

Abstract

This paper presents WalkingBot, a modular robot system that allows non-expert users to build a multi-legged robot in various morphologies using a set of building blocks with sensors and actuators embedded. The kinematic model of the built robot is interpreted automatically and revealed in a customized GUI through an integrated hardware and software design, so that users can understand, control, and program the robot easily. A Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme is introduced to generate a control policy for various motions (e.g. moving forward, turning left) corresponding to the sensed robot structure, affording rich robot motions right after assembling. Targeting different levels of programming skill, two programming methods, visual block programming and events programming, are also presented to enable users to create their own interactive legged robot.