Operation Strategy for a Low-Cost Easy-Operation Cassino Hexapod

Abstract

This paper presents operation strategies for a hexapod walking machine that has been designed and built at the Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics (LARM) at the University of Cassino. Special care has been addressed in proposing and describing a suitable mechanical design and architecture that can be easily operated by a PLC with on-off logic. Experimental tests are reported in order to show feasibility and operational capability of the proposed design.

A Hybrid Multi-objective Evolutionary Approach for Optimal Path Planning of a Hexapod Robot

“…In a recent past, research activities have been undergoing at LARM, Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics of Cassino and Southern Lazio University, for developing six-legged robots within the so called "Cassino Hexapod" series (for more details see [25][26][27][28]. The main features of the proposed design solutions have been the use of low-cost mechanism architectures and user friendly operation features.…”

Design Issues for Hexapod Walking Robots

“…In the same way, spider leg configuration score is 1. Referring to [81,82], the hybrid legs score is 9, similarly to mammalian configuration. As regards the legs' orientation, sagittal score is 1 since this solution is not effective in satisfying the obstacle avoidance requirement.…”

Static Balancing of Wheeled-legged Hexapod Robots

“…Wheeled-legged robots combine the best features of two locomotion types: wheel efficiency and velocity alongside legged robots' capability to deal with difficult terrains. Service activities where time can be a matter of life and death, such as search and rescue missions or hospital assistance, are examples of tasks that might benefit significantly from such systems [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. These hybrid systems, robots with legs ending in wheels, can move by driving on the wheels while adjusting with legs to slow changes in terrain height.…”

“…The robot switches to legged locomotion if larger obstacles prevent driving [2,3]. Although these kinds of robots are able to switch from one locomotion type to the other, most of the active research focuses on combining both locomotion types as an active suspension system as presented by De Viragh et al [4], Carbone and collaborators [5], and Copilusi and colleagues [6,7]; these studies use a kinematics approach to generate velocity commands for wheels, and also consider incorporating the whole body dynamics of the root to generate torque commands for each of the joints, including the wheels [8]. In addition, other research, like that of Chen and colleagues [9] and Bai and co-workers [10], explores transformable robots which are able to transform their wheels into legs, or use them as legs to reproduce a wheeled or legged locomotion.…”