Metamorphic Mechanism and Reconfiguration of a Biomimetic Quadruped Robot

Abstract

This paper presents reconfiguration with mobility change of an 8-bar metamorphic single-loop mechanism consisting of 8 revolute joints. Higher order analyses are employed to determine the local mobility of two special bifurcated positions of this 8-bar linkage. All the sub-motion branches and their connections of these two singular positions are revealed. Then a biomimetic quadruped robot is built by adopting the reconfigurable 8-bar linkage as its trunk. Based on the configuration spaces of this metamorphic mechanism, two strategies are introduced to control the reconfiguration between different modes.