DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF SIX LEG KINEMATIC MOVING MACHINE

SUBMITTED BY,

Mahesh waran.M Kaviarasan.T Muthu kumar. S.K Elavarasan.K

ABSTRACT
SIX-LEGGED WALKING MACHINE: THE ROBOT-EA308
The work presented in this thesis aims to make contribution to the understanding and application of six-legged statically stable walking machines in both theoretical and practical levels. In this thesis five pieces of work, performed with and for the three-joint six-legged RobotEA308, are presented: 1) Standard gaits, which include the well-known wave gaits, are defined and a stability analysis, in the sense of static stable walking, is performed on an analytical level. Various definitions are given; theorems are stated and proved. 2) A free gait generation algorithm with reinforcement learning is developed. Its facilities of stability improvement, smooth speed changes, and adaptation in case of a rear-leg deficiency with learning of five-legged walking are experimented in real-time on the Robot- EA308. 3) Trajectory optimization and controller design is performed for the protraction movement of a three-joint leg. The trajectory generated by the controller is demonstrated with the Robot- EA308. 4) The full kinematic-dynamic formulation of a three-joint six-legged robot is performed with the jointtorques being the primary variables. It is demonstrated that the proposed torque distribution scheme, rather than the conventional force distribution, results in an efficient distribution of required forces and moments to the supporting legs. 5) An analysis of energy efficiency is performed for wave gaits. The established strategies for determination of gait parameters for an efficient walk are justified using the RobotEA308.

Many of the animals in nature have adopted legs for various environmental conditions. Centipedes, spiders, cockroaches, cats, camels, kangaroos, and human are among those, either with different number of legs or with different kind of walking. It is understandable that people turned their attention to those walking animals, after it was recognized that the human invented wheeled and tracked systems did not satisfy all the needs. In this sense, legged systems have a peculiarity of imitating the nature. This imitation is obvious in structural similarity between legged robots and imitated animals; however, for today the imitation is not limited to structural design. Today researchers are trying to understand the underlying biological principles of walking in animals, namely the operational and control structures (Hughes, 1965; Wilson, 1966; Pearson, 1976; Cruse, 1979; Cruse et. al, 1983; Cruse, 1990). The results of such biological researches have been utilized in robotics via inspirations. Among many of them are Cruse et al.(1998), Espenschied et al. (1996), Pfeiffer et al. (1995), and Clark et al. (2001).