• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.689-695
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• 2003

Fault-tolerance is an important design criterion for robotic systems operating in hazardous or remote environments. This paper addresses the issue of tolerating a locked joint failure in gait planning for hexapod walking machines which have symmetric structures and legs in the form of an articulated arm with three revolute joints. A locked joint failure is one for which a joint cannot move and is locked in place. If a failed joint is locked, the workspace of the resulting leg is constrained, but hexapod walking machines have the ability to continue static walking. A strategy of fault-tolerant tripod gait is proposed and, as a specific form, a periodic tripod gait is presented in which hexapod walking machines have the maximum stride length after a locked failure. The adjustment procedure from a normal gait to the proposed fault-tolerant gait is shown to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed scheme.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.131-140
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• 2005

Fault-tolerant gait generation of a hexapod robot with crab walking is proposed. The considered fault is a locked joint failure, which prevents a joint of a leg from moving and makes it locked in a known position. Due to the reduced workspace of a failed leg, fault-tolerant crab walking has a limitation in the range of heading direction. In this paper, an accessible range of the crab angle is derived for a given configuration of the failed leg and, based on the principles of fault-tolerant gait planning, periodic crab gaits are proposed in which a hexapod robot realizes crab walking after a locked joint failure, having a reasonable stride length and stability margin. The proposed crab walking is then applied to path planning on uneven terrain with positive obstacles. i.e., protruded obstacles which legged robots cannot cross over but have to take a roundabout route to avoid. The robot trajectory should be generated such that the crab angle does not exceed the restricted range caused by a locked joint failure.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.536-543
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose a new type of hexapod robot that can walk fast. Most of the conventional hexapod robots are either rectangular type of hexagonal type. Those robots have drawbacks in the speed and stability of walking. The proposed robot has six legs, one fore leg, one hind leg, two left legs and two right legs. The proposed robot forms relatively wide supporting polygons along the walking direction, so it can walk very fast stably. We implemented the proposed hexapod robot and showed the feasibility of the robot by 3+3 walking experiment and 2+4 walking experiment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.943-951
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• 2003

A strategy for fault-tolerant gaits of autonomous legged robots is proposed. A legged robot is considered to be fault tolerant with respect to a given failure if it is guaranteed to be capable of walking maintaining its static stability after the occurrence of the failure. 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. If a failed joint is locked, the workspace of the resulting leg is constrained, but legged robots have fault tolerance capability to continue static walking. An algorithm for generating fault-tolerant gaits is described and, especially, periodic gaits are presented for forward walking of a hexapod robot with a locked joint failure. The leg sequence and the formula of the stride length are analytically driven based on gait study and robot kinematics. The transition procedure from a normal gait to the proposed fault-tolerant gait is shown to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed scheme.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.585-593
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• 2004

Fault-tolerant gait planning in legged locomotion is to design gaits with which legged robots can maintain static stability and motion continuity against a failure in a leg. For planning a robust and deadlock-free fault-tolerant gait, kinematic constraints caused by a failed leg should be closely examined with respect to remaining mobility of the leg. In this paper, based on the authors's previous results, deadlock avoidance scheme for fault-tolerant gait planning is proposed for a hexapod robot walking over even terrain. The considered fault is a locked joint failure, which prevents a joint of a leg from moving and makes it locked in a known position. It is shown that for guaranteeing the existence of the previously proposed fault-tolerant tripod gait of a hexapod robot, the configuration of the failed leg must be within a range of kinematic constraints. Then, for coping with failure situations where the existence condition is not satisfied, the previous fault-tolerant tripod gait is improved by including the adjustment of the foot trajectory. The foot trajectory adjustment procedure is analytically derived to show that it can help the fault-tolerant gait avoid deadlock resulting from the kinematic constraint and does not make any harmful effect on gait mobility. The post-failure walking problem of a hexapod robot with the normal tripod gait is addressed as a case study to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.457-463
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• 2009

In this paper, a novel foot force distribution algorithm for hexapod walking robots is presented. The considered hexapod robot has fault-tolerant tripod gaits with a failed leg in locked-joint failure. The principle of the proposed algorithm is to minimize the slippage of the leg that determines the stability margin of the fault-tolerant gaits. The fault-tolerant tripod gait has a drawback that it has less stability margin than normal gaits. Considering this drawback, 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. In a case study, the proposed algorithm is compared with a conventional foot force distribution method and its applicability is demonstrated.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.124-129
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• 2013

Hexapod walking robots are superior to biped or quadruped ones in terms of walking stability. Therefore hexapod robots have the advantage in performing intelligent tasks based on walking stability. In this paper, we propose a hexapod robot that has one fore leg, one hind leg, two left legs, and two right legs and can perform various intelligent tasks. We build the robot by using 26 motors and implement a controller which consists of a host PC, a DSP main controller, an AVR auxiliary controller, and smart phone/pad. We show by several experiments that the implemented robot can perform various intelligent tasks such as uneven surface walking, tracking and kicking a ball, remote control and 3D monitoring by using data obtained from stereo camera, infrared sensors, ultra sound sensors, and contact sensors.

• 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.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.91-93
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• 2000

Insects have many excellent features and functions in their small bodies, such as hexapod walking, flapping flight, vision systems, sensory hairs, etc, and those characteristics can be thought as good models for many types of robots. Insects also will be good models far micro-machines because of its size. Insect behavior consists of simple reflex acts and programmed behavior, Some robots were made in order to clarify the emergent mechanism of insect behavior, Through some experiments it would be found that even if insect behavior consists of some simple action patterns, it looks intelligent through interactions its sensors and actuators with its complex environment. In the near futures small robots inspired by insects will be used in many fields of our life. I hope that insect-model based robots will play an active part in many fields and that they will make us happy.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.227-234
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• 2011

The Interest in robotics has been steadily increasing in recent times both in Korea as well as abroad. Research on robots for new and diverse fields is ongoing. This study discusses the current research and development on robot actuator, which are used to control the joints of robots, and focuses on developing more efficient technology for joint control, as compared with the current technologies. It also aims to find means to apply the abovementioned technology to diverse industrial fields. We found that easy and effective control of actuators could be achieved by using ZigBee sensor networks, which were widely being used on wireless communications. Throughout the experiments it is proved that the developed wireless actuator could be used for easy control of various robot joints. This technology can be effectively applied to develop two-legged robots that will be able to walk like human, or even quadruped and hexapod robots. It can also be applied to motors used in industry. In this study, we develop an extremely minimized ZigBee sensor network module that can be used to control various servo motors with low power consumption even if it is long distances. We realized effective wireless control by optimizing the ZigBee antenna, and were able to quickly check the status of relevant Tree node through mutual communication between the servo motors composing the ZigBee sensor network and the main server control modules. The developed Servo Motor with ZigBee sensor network modules can be applied in both robotics as well as for home or factory automation.