Development of walking manipulator with versatile locomotion

At present, robots are demanded not only for stationary use but also for tasks that require high mobility. The important abilities for such robots are both moving and task performing abilities. However, in order to perform tasks and move using separate mechanisms, robots are required to have many degrees of freedom (DOF). As a result, robots become heavy and lose mobility. In this paper, an effective design of robots with reduced-DOF is described. Besides, an 8-DOF bipedal configuration robot with high tasking and moving performance was developed. In this robot, the DOF have been reduced as much as possible without hampering its mobility, finding a balance between the increase in weight with additional DOF and the loss of manipulability with reduction of DOF. Moreover, applying this concept to the locomotion using the same DOF for differential purpose, it is possible to use the sane mechanism for the legged locomotion and wheeled locomotion. In this paper, this concept and maneuvers for locomotion are described. New experimental model is designed and experiment results for proposed locomotive maneuvers are expressed.