Detection of Footholds with Leg-grope and Safety Walking for Quadruped Robots on Weak Terrain

Abstract

When a legged-robot walks on an irregular terrain such as a stricken area, some footholds may be collapsed by an external force that caused by the walking robot, and consequently the robot stumbles and falls. In this study we propose locomotion method that will not cause large collapse of the environment while the robot walks on the weak area. First, we define the weak environment that has possibility to collapse the field, then a strategy to walk on the weak environment is shown. Next, the condition of center of gravity of the robot and the leg-grope sequence is derived based on statics. Furthermore, experimental results to verify the proposed method are shown by using a quadruped legged-robot.