Terramechanics Analysis And Control System Research Of A Bionic Hexapod Robot On Complex Ground

Automobile runs fast on the highway, and train rolls at high speed on the railway. Butthe vehicles require all of that engineered smoothness. If in the desert or disaster sites andbattlefields, they can’t go far. However, some reptiles like lizards can move freely in thespecial places. According to the inspiration from lizards, researching the bionic robot whichcan run like a lizard on the complex ground is of most importance.First, the paper built the mathematical model of tripod gait for soft ground and the gaitfor hard ground. Analyzed the terramechanics between leg of robot and the soft ground,and the terramechanics on the hard ground. And then according to the analysis, calculatedthe torque and power needed by the robot to provide basis for the selection of the motor ofrobot. Second, the hardware of the control system was designed based on the idea ofmodularization. It includes the microprocessor module, motor driving module, positionmeasuring module, and the power module. Third, also based on the idea of modularization,the paper designed the software of the control system, including the communicationmodule, the assistant module, the control module. And designed the control panel for therobot using VB programming language. With this, the robot is controlled moreconveniently. Forth, after installing the microprocessor module, the driving module, and soon, the robot was completely finished. Made robot walk on the smooth ground to carry outthe straight walking experiment, and then measured the lateral error on displacementbecause of the machining errors or the assembly errors of the robot. Made the robot walkon the soft ground with soft ground gait, and then found the limit of speed of the robot onthe soft ground. To be the same, made the robot walk on the hard ground with hard groundgait, and then found the limit of speed on the hard ground. The effectiveness of turning ofthe robot was verified by experiments and the time it costs when turn different angle wasrecorded. With the experiments measured above, the bionic hexapod robot’s fastest speedreaches220mm/s on the soft ground, and251mm/s on the hard ground. What is worthmentioning, it is not easy to be caved for the robot because of the special gait, whenwalking on the soft ground. So the robot may supply some kind of reference to the robotwalking on the complex ground, especially on the soft ground(the desert).