Study And Design Of The Mechanism Of A Reconfigurable Modular Multilegged Walking Robot

Since the first multilegged walking robot was designed in 1960s, about 50 years of development in walking robot research area have resulted in the blooming of walking robots. However most of the existing robots, which are complex both in mechanical and control architectures, are still facing problems such as functionality, adaptability, and maintainability. These problems block the walking robots widely accepted.This paper focus on the mechanism study of a reconfigurable modular walking robot named MiniQuad. In order to find a solution that meet all the demands in functionality, adaptability and maintainability, a modular design method was introduced into the process of design a walking robot. The kinematics analyses of fundamental motions, the static force analyses of a single foot, the modular design methods and the simulation of some simple gaits and movements are carried out sequentially.The features of some common configurations exist for walking robots are firstly discussed. The reptile-like configuration is chosen to be the desired design configuration of the MiniQuad and the kinematics equations of each leg are derived. The kinematics parameters including degrees of freedom, kinematics and inverse kinematics features are calculated by above methods. These parameters are the base of static force analyze as follows. Some essential movements are designed and the geometry constrains equations for each joint are also calculated. The equations delivered here servers as a mathematical method to analyze the kinematical performance of the MiniQuad mechanical structure.A new static joint leg force analyses method using principle of virtual work are introduced. The Jacobian matrices are used to simplify the derivation and calculation of the equations. Using above method the load torques of each joint in MiniQuad legs are calculated. Those calculations direct the MiniQuad mechanical structure design.Based on the kinematics and static force analyses performed above, a modular design conception was introduced into the design process of MiniQuad mechanical structure. Three fundamental modules are design using such concept. Different MiniQuad robots differ in configurations can be assembled by those modules. Based on several simulations on basic movements including straight line crawlin, rotating, and object picking and holding, the advantages on functionality, structural simplicity, reconfigurability and maintainability can be illustrated.