Force Control in Locomotion of Legged Vehicle and for Service Operations

Abstract

New results on the development of adaptive six-legged walking robots and their control systems are presented. The major part of the paper considers force control for step adaptation and control of body motion based on the information about the main force vector acting on the vehicle. We developed and experimentally tested algorithms for inserting and drilling operations based on the force control. Rectangular and hexagonal vehicles are considered. Keywords: Walking robot, force sensing, active compliance, accommodation 1. Introduction A rectangular vehicle ("Masha") was developed at the Institute for Mechanics of the Moscow State University and the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission of the Russian Academy of Sciences (fig.1) [1]. A hexagonal vehicle ("Mag") was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (fig.2) [2]. Both vehicles have six legs with three powered degrees of freedom each. The legs are powered by electrical drives with gea..