The Gait Design and Trajectory Planning of a Gecko-Inspired Climbing Robot.

Xuepeng Li,Fei Zhao,Wei Wang,Peihua Zhu,Shilin Wu,Linqing Wang

doi:10.1155/2018/2648502

Abstract

Inspired by the dynamic gait adopted by gecko, we had put forward GPL (Gecko-inspired mechanism with a Pendular waist and Linear legs) model with one passive waist and four active linear legs. To further develop dynamic gait and reduce energy consumption of climbing robot based on the GPL model, the gait design and trajectory planning are addressed in this paper. According to kinematics and dynamics of GPL, the trot gait and continuity analysis are executed. The effects of structural parameters on the supporting forces are analyzed. Moreover, the trajectory of the waist is optimized based on system energy consumption. Finally, a bioinspired robot is developed and the prototype experiment results show that the larger body length ratio, a certain elasticity of the waist joint, and the optimized trajectory contribute to a decrease in the supporting forces and reduction in system energy consumption, especially negative forces on supporting feet. Further, the results in our experiments partly explain the reasonability of quadruped reptile's kinesiology during dynamic gait.

Highlights

Wall-climbing robots can move and work on a vertical wall to complete various tasks, which have attracted much attention of researchers around the world and have wide application fields including antiterrorism, postdisaster rescue, engineering test, and maintenance and inspection for hazardous environment [1,2,3,4]
To further develop dynamic gait and reduce energy consumption of climbing robots based on the GPL model, the gait design and trajectory planning will be addressed in this paper
Benefitting from dynamic gait, the GPL model inspired by gecko has been proposed in our previous work

Summary

Introduction

Wall-climbing robots can move and work on a vertical wall to complete various tasks, which have attracted much attention of researchers around the world and have wide application fields including antiterrorism, postdisaster rescue, engineering test, and maintenance and inspection for hazardous environment [1,2,3,4]. Many previous works have been carried out to promote development of climbing robots, such as the Climbing Mini-Whegs, the Waalbot II [6], the RiSE [7, 8], the Stintov, and the StickyBot [9, 10], characterized with pivot joints on the legs These climbing robots can be applied in many challenging environments such as tree, glasses, cabinets, or concrete surfaces. The GPL model inspired by the F-G model consists of two rigid bodies (upper part and lower part with tail), four linear legs with spring buffers, and a passive waist joint It aims at explaining the relationships of the locomotion dynamics, the variables of the movement, and the parameters of the mechanism for sprawl quadruped climbing animals. To further develop dynamic gait and reduce energy consumption of climbing robots based on the GPL model, the gait design and trajectory planning will be addressed in this paper. Conclusions are drawn and the future work is described

Gait Design and Continuity Analysis

Trajectory Planning of GPL

Experiments and Results

Conclusion and Future Work