Gait adaptation of a six legged walker to enable gripping

The value of researching legged walkers can be seen as they are being used more often. Walking robots are better at navigating over rough terrain and, depending on the leg configuration, can have redundancy to mitigate leg failure. As a four legged walker is statically stable, a six legged walking robot has are two redundant legs. This addition of extra legs allows for either a six legged walking gait or a four legged walking gait where two of the legs are utilised as grippers. In this paper various gripper types are analysed and the affect of the performance with regards to walking stability and gait design are analysed.