Gait analysis and implementation of a six leg walking machine

This paper describes a successful attempt to have Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering final year students working together on a mechatronics project. The work consisted of constructing a prototype six leg walking machine on which arbitrary gaits could be implemented and tested. This vehicle was also used to conduct some basic studies on terrain adaptive gaits and pit avoidance strategies. The test machine consists of a 38 cm long, 1.3 kg rectangular hexapod. Each leg has two degrees of freedom, actuated by position controlled servomotors, and a contact switch in the foot. The electromechanical part was first constructed and interfaced with a PC, via an umbilical. Later, a on-board microcontroller (Intel 8096) was installed, to make the vehicle semi-autonomous. In order to emphasize the influence of the gait on the vehicle behaviour, the paper begins with a review of the stability properties of some well known regular symmetric gaits on flat ground. This work is part of a EEC sponsored TELEMAN project aiming at developing a legged inspection vehicle for disordered, hostile environment.<>