Gait and Foot Trajectory Planning for Versatile Motions of a Six-Legged Robot

This article deals with the problem of planning and controlling a radially symmetric six-legged walker on an uneven terrain when a smooth time-varying body motion is required. The main difficulties lie on the planning of gaits and foot trajectories. As for the gaits, this article discusses the forward wave gait of a variable duty factor and a variable wave direction. With the commanded body motion, the maximum possibly duty factor is computed using the speed limit of the leg swing motion. Guaranteeing this maximum duty factor contributes to obtain higher stability.Weprove the ‘‘continuity’’ of this forward wave gait planning algorithm adds the versatility to gaits planned. The foot trajectory planning algorithm dynamically generates a smooth foot trajectory as a function of the instantaneous body motions by modifying standard leg motion templates. The robot can negotiate an uneven terrain by modifying a vertical leg motion by a signal of tactile sensors on the foot. The experiments prove that the robot can successfully track smooth curves with body rotations on an uneven terrain, and thus prove the robustness of the algorithms.