Software Evolution Of A Hexapod Robot Walking Gait

Abstract

This paper describes the process of evolving a Hexapod Robot walking gait within a simulated software environment. Initially a 3D mathematical model of the robot was created using Matlab, simulating full motion of each the robot's six legs. Each leg has three degrees of freedom (DOF), allowing the robot to move in both lateral and rotational directions. The simulation allows the robot's movements to be determined, based on a repeated sequence of static leg positions, and was used with a genetic algorithm (GA) to evolve walking gaits for the robot. The walking gait is described by a chromosome which is an 18times9 look up table (LUT) that lists the angular position of all eighteen servo motors over a sequence of nine discrete static positions, which will describe the walking gait. Each position in the LUT has twenty discrete states ranging from -45deg to +45deg, allowing a flexible range of achievable motions, while maintaining sensible evaluation limits. Successful evolution of these gaits was performed within 700 generations.