Gait planning and gait transition of AmphiHex-I

Amphibious robots often utilize collections of gait patterns to locomote over a variety of surface. Each gait of amphibious robots is generally tuned for a specific environment and a set of working conditions. To achieve steady locomotion across a changing environment, a robot should be capable of transition between gaits while keeping on moving. This paper describes the gait patterns, gait parameters and gait transition technique that allow a developed amphibious robot, AmphiHex-I, to transfer from one gait to another. By understanding the characteristics of gaits, we present methods to perform different gaits and accomplish smooth transition between several gaits. A series of locomotion experiments of AmphiHex-I that adopts defined gaits across various environments are presented.