The Design and Building of a Hexapod Robot with Biomimetic Legs

Abstract

A hexapod robot with biomimetic legs was built to implement a distributed control system, where a mechanism is proposed to serve as the central pattern generator and a computer to act as the brain-stem, cooperating with the central pattern generator through wireless communication. The proposed mechanism is composed of two modules, i.e., the tripod gait generator and the Theo Jansen Linkage. The tripod gait generator is a device that uses a single motor to generate a tripod gait, while the Theo Jansen Linkage rhythmically executes the legged motion. In a sense, we are trying to implement the locomotion of a robot by means of a hybrid computational system, including the mechanism part and the electronic processors part. The complex mathematical function of the foot movement is realized by the ensemble of links of the Theo Jansen Linkage, so as to alleviate the computational burden. Besides, the proposed design, based on non-collocated actuators, is intended to minimize the number of actuators while reducing the building cost of the robot.

Design and programming of a walking robot

“…In [Ali et al 2013] the FPGA is used for servo motor control in a six-legged robot platform. Other recently introduced solutions concerning the design and control of a walking robot can be found in [Hwang et al 2019] and [Žák, Rozman and Zbořil 2021].…”

Special Issue: Selected Papers from IEEE ICASI 2019

“…The proposed design outperformed previous works in terms of throughput per area. M. C. Hwang et al [8] reported on "The Design and Building of a Hexapod Robot with Biomimetic Legs". A hexapod robot with biomimetic legs was built to implement a distributed control system, where a mechanism is proposed to serve as the central pattern generator and a computer to act as the brain stem, cooperating with the central pattern generator through wireless communication.…”

Design and Analysis of the Rolling and Jumping Compound Motion Robot

“…For flat terrain, rolling robots have the characteristics of fast-moving speed and wide range of motion [1]. Compared with wheeled, tracked, or legged structures [2][3][4], they have smaller volume and higher fault tolerance. When facing rough terrain or large obstacles, jumping robots are obviously the most reasonable choice, which can surmount an obstacle of their own size, or even several times their own size [5].…”