Sensing and control of quadruped walking and climbing robot over complex environment

In this paper, we propose a method of sensing outdoor environments for a walking and climbing robot. The proposed method ensures the realtime perception of the surface geometry by integrating a range and a gyroscope with a novel arrangement of the sensors. In addition, a gait planning algorithm based on the sensing method is presented. The algorithm runs fast since it is simple, and the rich information from the sensing system helps the robot overcome the real environment, even an extremely complex one. The sensing system is implemented in a quadruped walking robot, called MRWALLSPECT IV and its effectiveness is proved experimentally.