Design and Implementation of a Bio-Mimic Hexapod Robot.

Mobile robots and their motion control are two of the challenging and active research areas nowadays. Wheeled robots can be very fast and stable when moving on smooth terrain. On the other hand, legged robots are far superior when it comes to rough terrains and environments that contain many obstacles, which is the case of many real-life situations. In this article, and the design and the implementation of a hexapod robot with 18 DOF is presented. This robot contains six legs attached to a main body known as the trunk. Each leg will have three links known as the coxa, the femur and the tibia, resulting in 3 joints and consequently 3 DOF for each leg powered by 3 DC servo motors. The amount of rotation for each servo motor is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller boards. Inverse and forward kinematics are studied to produce a mathematical model for the motion of the legs based on a predefined trajectory for the end effector of each leg. The robot is designed using CAD software and a simulation is carried out in order to validate the inverse and forward kinematics results. In addition, an experimental prototype setup is built and tested. Experimental results for the robot motion show smooth motion for the robot. It is tested on different types of terrains, namely, smooth and rough terrains, and the results are promising in each case. Video for the motion will be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]