The DLR Crawler: evaluation of gaits and control of an actively compliant six-legged walking robot

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present and evaluate methods of control and gait generation for the DLR Crawler – a six‐legged walking robot prototype based on the fingers of the DLR Hand II.Design/methodology/approach – Following the institutes philosophy, the DLR Crawler is a highly integrated mechatronic device. As in all DLR robots, joint torque sensing plays an important role to allow actively compliant interaction with the environment. To control the Crawler a joint compliance controller is implemented and two different methods of gait generation are in use. The first method, intended for moderately uneven terrain, employs scalable patterns of fixed coordination combined with a leg extension reflex. For the second method, used in rougher terrain, a set of rules found by biologists in stick insect studies is applied. Based on these rules gaits emerge according to a velocity command. These gaits are combined with several reflexes to a reactive walking algorithm.Findings – The compliance cont...

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