Walking robot with supervisory control

A design of a six-legged walking robot with supervisory control is presented. A hierarchical control system of the robot incorporates a hybrid computer.In recent years the problem of developing a robot, moving on legs in a rough terrain, has been extensively investigated 1–10]. The legged, off-road vehicles exhibit mobility advantages and provide more comfortable movement than that of tracked or wheeled vehicles. Now, some scientific as well as technical problems requiring the application of such vehicles may be mentioned.However, the advantages of a walking robot over other types of moving vehicles result from its greater complexity. A large number of controllable degrees of freedom requires highly efficient drives properly arranged, special design of feet to dissipate the energy of the strike, etc. It is a rather difficult task to design a control system for a legged vehicle having all of its advantages. The control system has to process the information about the terrain, to decide on the type of the motion and to execute it. Thus the problem of the control seems to be the main problem of the walking robot. It should be mentioned, that the experience in designing most complex systems of the automatic control cannot be directly applied to the problem of a walking robot control. As a matter of fact, the problem of spatial movement control in such a complicated form is being solved for a first time.The results of numerous biomechanical studies may be helpful in solving the arising problems. The principles of motor control in animals and man have been studied by several authors.The control system of the described robot is based on the idea of the synergy of the regular gait, which constitutes the main pattern of the motion. When necessary, that motion is modified to adapt the gait to an uneven surface or to perform different manoeuvres to avoid or to overcome obstacles. It is called a quasi-regular gait.This report presents the results of the joint work carried out by two research groups: the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission, Academy of Sciences U.S.S.R. and the Institute for Mechanics of the Moscow State University.