A torque-actuated dissipative spring loaded inverted pendulum model with rolling contact and its use as the template for design and dynamic behavior generation on a hexapod robot

We report on a model-based approach for robot design and its dynamic motion generation. A new torque-actuated dissipative spring loaded inverted pendulum model with rolling contact (TDR-SLIP) is proposed to serve as the motion template for the robot. It is a successor to a previously developed spring loaded inverted pendulum model with rolling contact (R-SLIP) model but with embedded energy flow, which has better mapping to empirical robots. The stability properties of the TDR-SLIP model are analyzed, and its stable motion trajectory is implemented on the robot as the control guidance. The robot leg is developed according to the morphology and function of the TDR-SLIP leg, which acts as the design guidance. The proposed model-based approach is experimentally evaluated and finds that the robot is able to exhibit running behavior with various speeds and leg mechanics settings.