Statically balanced walking of a crawler robot

This research paper presents new technique for a crawler robot to achieve statically balanced walking. The gait design and its control of walking robot require the stability against tipping over while walking. These factors need to be treated in a more specific fashion than the wheeled robots, as there are discrete changes in the support of the robot when the legs are lifted or placed. The stability of the robot is dependent on how the legs are positioned relative to the body and on the sequence and timing in which the legs are lifted and placed. In order to reduce the risk of the robot losing stability while walking, a measure for the robot stability is typically used in the gait and motion planning. A stability measure called Static Stability Margin (SSM) is proposed in order to evaluate the gait pattern of various animal locomotion. In this paper, different biological behaviors of four legged animals are studied and implemented into a quad crawler robot. Experimental studies were carryout for forward walking gaits namely the lizard gait and horse gait. From the experimental studies, the stability margins of different gaits are discussed and compared.