A hexapod walking machine with decoupled freedoms

Abstract

Legged locomotion over irregular terrain is composed of body-propelling motion and terrain-adapting motion. Although conventional walking machines with three degrees-of-freedom for each leg can adapt their feet on irregular ground using flexible leg freedom, such machines generally require a tremendously complex control scheme for the body-propelling motion. A walking machine with decoupled freedoms is based on the idea that body-propelling motion is realized by only one degree-of-freedom, and this freedom can be perfectly decoupled from the freedoms for terrain adaptability. As an application of such a walking machine, a hexapod walking machine using an approximate straight line mechanism was developed and several basic experiments were performed to demonstrate the properties of this type of walking machine.