Towards the design of a leg-wheel walking hexapod

Hexapod walking robots have been widely addressed in literature. Their design requires to manage a very large number of design variables and design solutions. Thus, this paper proposes a procedure in order to systematically design a hexapod walking robot. A design case of study is described in order to show the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed procedure. As results the design concept and mechanical configuration of a novel hybrid leg-wheel hexapod walking robot is presented. The proposed robot is composed of six legs having a modular anthropomorphic architecture with omni-wheels as feet at its extremity.