Motion analysis of underactuated locomotion robot with quick return linkages on slippery level surface

Abstract

The authors showed that an underactuated locomotion robot can generate a stable forward motion on downhill by utilizing the effects of sliding and wobbling. It was, however, difficult to generate forward motion on level surface. Our next research objective is therefore achieving stable motion generation on slippery level surface. It is being developed that a new type of the robot utilizing wobbling effects by quick return linkage. In this paper, we report the numerical simulation results and the parametric analysis results, and furthermore, we also outline the experimental robot we are developing now. We numerically show that the robot can successfully generate a stable level motion by utilizing the wobbling effect of a quick return linkage. Furthermore, we conduct parametric studies to analyze the change in the moving speed with respect to the driving frequency of the quick return linkage.