Obstacle avoidance and motion planning scheme for a hexapod robot Octopus-III

• Published in: Robotics and autonomous systems 2018-05, Vol.103, p.199-212
• Main Authors: Zhao, Yue, Chai, Xun, Gao, Feng, Qi, Chenkun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Gait motion generation; Hexapod robot; Obstacle avoidance; Parallel mechanism; Trajectory planning
• ISSN: 0921-8890; 1872-793X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.robot.2018.01.007

Legged robots have advanced potential to move in complex environment accomplishing operating, rescuing and detecting tasks. In real applications, bypassing large obstacles is a more common choice for legged robots comparing with walking over and climbing the obstacles. However, few papers involve the obstacle avoidance approach for legged robots. An obstacle avoidance and motion planning scheme for a hexapod robot is presented in this paper. The scheme takes advantage of the superior mobility of the legged robot and fulfills requirements of walking stability and kinematic feasibility. Firstly, a novel obstacle avoidance trajectory planning method is proposed, which is inspired by the superior mobility of the legged robot. Then, a motion generation approach for the legged robot is developed to control the robot to walk along the planned trajectory. The approach coordinates the body motion and the feet motions to fulfill requirements of walking stability and kinematic feasibility simultaneously. Finally, the scheme is integrated on a hexapod robot and tested by real experiments. •A novel obstacle avoidance path planning method for a hexapod robot is proposed.•Formulate the obstacle avoidance issue as an optimization problem.•Consider the walking stability and the kinematic feasibility simultaneously.•The proposed scheme is applied, and several experiments are carried out.