Development of agricultural bionic four-legged robot: Effect of head movement adjustment on the stability of goats

Abstract

The four-legged bionic robot for agriculture has been one of the hotspots in the field of robotics. The farmland environment is complex, and the balance requirement of quadruped bionic robot is higher. However, head adjustment is a key factor affecting the balance of quadruped animals. Based on this, this study takes the four-legged animal goat as an example to investigate the effect of goat head movement adjustment on the balance of goat. In this study, the head and neck of goats were simplified to a two-link model. The kinematics model was established by D-H method. MATLAB software was used to solve it. Origin software was used to draw the movement track of the center of mass of the head. The center of mass movement of the head is a quarter ellipse. Then, the goat walking experiments were carried out on the different slopes (0°, 5°, 10°, 15°, 20°, 25°, 30°, 35° and 40°). MATLAB software was used to fit the movement data of goat head. The movement of the center of mass of the goat's head corresponds to Fourier 6. The result is: the determination coefficient is 0.8629, and the mean variance is 0.019. When the slope gradient gradually increases, the volatility gradually increases and is cyclical. The results of this study verify the rationality of the four-legged bionic mechanism under various parameters and reveal the mechanism of goat walking with an appendage at the head. Keywords: bionic four-legged robot, slope, head, center of mass, trajectory, balance DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20191204.4287 Citation: Zhang F, Wang Y F, Teng S, Zheng L M, Wang J J, Chen Z J. Development of agricultural bionic four-legged robot: Effect of head movement adjustment on the stability of goats. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2019; 12(4): 10–15.