Research on a six-legged walking robot with parallel mechanism

Author

OTA, Yusuke ; Inagaki, Yoshihiko ; Yoneda, Kan ; Hirose, Shigeo

Author_Institution

Tokyo Inst. of Technol., Japan

Volume

1

fYear

1998

fDate

13-17 Oct 1998

Firstpage

241

Abstract

A new lightweight six-legged robot is developed which uses a simple mechanism and can move and work with high efficiency. This robot consists of two leg-bases with three legs each and walks by moving each leg-base alternately. These leg-bases are connected to each other through a 6-DOF mechanism. Thus, when the robot stands on three legs, or one leg-base is placed on the ground, the other leg-base can be used as a 6-DOF manipulator or active working platform. The output force, velocity, and movable range of various mechanisms for connecting the two leg-bases were compared and the results showed that good performance could be achieved with a serial-parallel hybrid mechanism consisting of three 6-DOF serial linked arms positioned with radial symmetry about the center of each leg-base, each composed of two active and four passive joints. Walking experiments with this robot confirm that this mechanism has satisfactory performance not only as a walking robot but also as an active walking platform

Keywords

legged locomotion; manipulators; 6-DOF manipulator; active joints; active working platform; leg-bases; lightweight six-legged robot; movable range; output force; parallel mechanism; passive joints; radial symmetry; serial linked arms; serial-parallel hybrid mechanism; six-legged walking robot; velocity; Arm; Foot; Humans; Joining processes; Leg; Legged locomotion; Manipulators; Mobile robots; Parallel robots; Stability;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1998. Proceedings., 1998 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on

Conference_Location

Victoria, BC

Print_ISBN

0-7803-4465-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IROS.1998.724626

Filename

724626