The DLR-Crawler: A testbed for actively compliant hexapod walking based on the fingers of DLR-Hand II

Walking is a fascinating way of locomotion that is very robust, especially in unstructured terrain. Many researchers devote their time to understanding its underlying principles and to build robots based on their findings. Using the fingers of DLR-Hand II a six-legged actively compliant walking robot is developed. It is intended to be used as testbed for the evaluation of different force- and position-based leg and gait control algorithms for hexapod walking in rough terrain. Following a brief overview of the finger hardware, the use of fingers as legs is analyzed and discussed. The body geometry as well as the systems constituting the robot are described. The compliance control algorithm used is explained and finally some experimental results are presented.

[1]  Gerd Hirzinger,et al.  DLR hand II: hard- and software architecture for information processing , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[2]  Hong Liu,et al.  DLR-Hand II: next generation of a dextrous robot hand , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[3]  Shigeo Hirose,et al.  Design of prismatic quadruped walking vehicle TITAN VI , 1991 .

[4]  Friedrich Pfeiffer,et al.  Leg Design Based on Biological Principles , 1993 .

[5]  Tsuneo Yoshikawa,et al.  Manipulability of Robotic Mechanisms , 1985 .

[6]  H. Cruse.  What mechanisms coordinate leg movement in walking arthropods? , 1990, Trends in Neurosciences.

[7]  Kenji KANEKO,et al.  Humanoid robot HRP-3 , 2004, 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[8]  Karsten Berns,et al.  Mechanical construction and computer architecture of the four-legged walking machine BISAM , 1999 .

[9]  B. Gassmann,et al.  Locomotion of LAURON III in rough terrain , 2001, 2001 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics. Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8556).

[10]  Hong Liu,et al.  DLR hand II: experiments and experience with an anthropomorphic hand , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[11]  Frank Kirchner,et al.  Stability of walking in a multilegged robot suffering leg loss , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.