• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.614-620
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• 2009

The force distribution in multi-legged robots is a constrained, optimization problem. The solution to the problem is the set points of the leg contact forces for a particular system task. In this paper, an efficient and general formulation of the force distribution problem is developed using linear programming. The considered walking robot is a quadruped robot with a locked-joint failure, i.e., a joint of the failed leg is locked at a known place. For overcoming the drawback of marginal stability in fault-tolerant gaits, we define safety margin on friction constraints as the objective function to be maximized. Dynamic features of locked-joint failure are represented by equality and inequality constraints of linear programming. Unlike the former study, our result can be applied to various forms of walking such as crab and turning gaits. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.43 no.5 s.311
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• pp.19-27
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• 2006

Improvement in gait stability of fault-tolerant gaits for quadruped robots is addressed in this paper. The previously developed fault-tolerant gait gives a quadruped robot the ability to continue its walk against the occurrence of a leg failure. But it has a drawback of having marginal gait stability, which may lead to tumbling when the robot body's center of gravity is perturbed. To overcome such a drawback, a novel fault-tolerant gait is presented in this paper that generates positive stability margin against a locked joint failure, in which a joint of a leg is locked in a known place. Positive stability margin is obtained by adjusting foot positions of supporting legs between leg swing sequences. The advantages of the proposed fault-tolerant gait are discussed by comparing with the previous gait in terms of gait stability, stride length and gait velocity.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.896-901
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• 2008

This paper addresses the foot force distribution problem for quadruped robots with a failed leg. The quadruped robot has fault-tolerant straight-line gaits with one leg in locked-joint failure, and has discontinuous motion with respect to the robot body. The proposed method is operated in two folds. When the robot body stands still, we use the feature that there are always three supporting legs, and by incorporating the theory of zero-interaction force, we calculate the foot forces analytically without resort to any optimization technique. When the robot body moves, the conventional pseudo-inverse algorithm is applied to obtain the foot forces for supporting legs. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.42 no.3 s.303
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• pp.1-10
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• 2005

This paper proposes a novel fault-tolerant gait planning of a hexapod robot considering kinematic constraints. The failure concerned in this paper is a locked joint failure for which a joint in a leg cannot move and is locked in place. It is shown that the conventional fault-tolerant gait of a hexapod robot for forward walking on even terrain may be fallen into deadlock, depending on the configuration of the failed leg. For coping with such deadlock situation, a novel fault-tolerant gait planning is proposed. It can avoid deadlock by adjusting the position of the foot trajectory, and has the same leg sequence and stride length as those of the conventional fault-tolerant gait. To demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme, a case study is presented in which a hexapod robot, having walked over even terrain before a locked joint failure, could avoid deadlock and continue its walking by the proposed fault-tolerant gait planning.