A motion planning for toppling-motion of a TET walker

Abstract

A TET Walker is a tetrahedral rover made to extend space exploration into inaccessible regions. A motion planning strategy for a tetrahedral walker is developed here. A tetrahedral rover with 6 length-variable struts and 4 nodes is considered. The kinematics of the robot is studied to find the possibility of toppling of the robot. The robot dynamics is also investigated to see when and with which configuration of nodes it would topple. A motion algorithm is then proposed to move the robot to the target.