Layout and construction of a hexapod robot with increased mobility

In this paper we concentrate on the design and construction of a novel insectoid walking machine which considers important aspects of arthropods to provide an optimal bodily framework for bioinspired control approaches for walking. In biological systems, control structures and body features have been subject to the same evolutional process. To benefit from bioinspired control approaches it is therefore fundamental to identify the most important body aspects in biological examples and to transfer body features and control approaches as pairs to the technical system. One example for these pairs is the local joint control during the stance phase of walking and elastic features of the joint-driving muscles. A second example is the optimisation of joint-torques and the structural stability of leg segments as a result of the slanted axes in insect legs. Following this train of thought, we introduced novel bioinspired elastic joint drives in the robot. The joint axes orientations, the leg onsets and the overall dimensions of the body and leg segments have been adopted and scaled-up from the biological model. To increase the range of movements, additional 2 DoF joints were introduced in between the individual body segments.