Trot-Like Roller-Skating of Quadrupedal Robot with Passive Wheels

Abstract

Inspired by humans, roller-skating for the quadrupedal robot is a special method to improve efficiency on flat ground. A new trot-like roller-skating gait for the quadrupedal robot with passive wheels is proposed to promote its mobile efficiency. A simple structure is used to install passive wheels on feet based on the typical quadruped robot for making up the quadrupedal robot with passive wheels. This quadrupedal robot has the same active degrees of freedom as the typical quadruped robot. The quadrupedal robot utilizes the non-holonomic constraint on both diagonal legs to achieve the trot-like roller-skating gait. The proposed trot-like roller-skating is verified in simulations and experiments. The results prove that the proposed roller-skating gait has a higher speed than a trot gait with the same energy consumption and higher efficiency than the pace-like roller-skating gait.