Design of a Four Legged Parallel Mechanism to Improve the Dexterity of Walking Robot

Abstract

This paper designs a four legged parallel mechanism to improve the dexterity of three layered parallel walking robot. Topology design is conducted for a leg mechanism composed of four legs, base and ground, which constitute a redundant parallel mechanism. This mechanism is subdivided into four sub-mechanism composed of three legs. A motor vector is adopted to determine the 6×8 Jacobian of the redundant parallel mechanism and the 6×6 Jacobian of the sub-mechanisms, respectively. The condition number of the Jacobian matrix is used as an index to measure a dexterity. We analyze the condition numbers of the Jacobian over the positional and orientational walking space. The analytical results show that a sub-mechanism has lots of singularities within workspace but they are removed by a redundant parallel mechanism improving the dexterity. This paper presents a parallel typed walking robot to enlarge walking space and stability region. Seven types of three layered walking robots are designed by inserting an intermediate mechanism between the upper and the lower legged parallel mechanisms. They provide various types of gaits to walk rough terrain and climb over a wall with small degrees of freedom.