Sensors for milliwalking machines

Hermes is a six-legged walking robot (milliwalking machine), which incorporates high powered processing, rich sensing, and high mobility into a compact body. This paper describes the sensors mounted on the machine: collision detection on each leg, 2 forward-mounted whiskers for obstacle detection, 3-bit support force detection on each leg, 4-elements in-board IR proximity sensors, and pitch and roll inclinometers. The results obtained during the experiments performed on IR proximity sensors as well as on self-made force sensors are given. Finally, some possible application for pneumatic or hydraulic systems are shown