Hexapod (robotics)
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A six-legged walking robot should not be confused with a Stewart platform, a kind of parallel manipulator used in robotics applications.
A hexapod robot is a mechanical vehicle that walks on six legs. Since a robot can be statically stable on three or more legs, a hexapod robot has a great deal of flexibility in how it can move. If legs become disabled, the robot may still be able to walk. Furthermore, not all of the robot's legs are needed for stability; other legs are free to reach new foot placements or manipulate a payload.
Many hexapod
Designs
Hexapod designs vary in leg arrangement. Insect-inspired robots are typically laterally symmetric, such as the RiSE robot at Carnegie Mellon.
Typically, individual legs range from two to six
Locomotion
Most often, hexapods are controlled by gaits, which allow the robot to move forward, turn, and perhaps side-step. Some of the most common gaits are as follows:
- Alternating tripod: 3 legs on the ground at a time.
- Quadruped.
- Crawl: move just one leg at a time.
Gaits for hexapods are often stable, even in slightly rocky and uneven terrain.
Motion may also be nongaited, which means the sequence of leg motions is not fixed, but rather chosen by the computer in response to the sensed environment. This may be most helpful in very rocky terrain, but existing techniques for motion planning are computationally expensive.
Biologically inspired
Insects are chosen as models because their
Biologically inspired hexapod robots largely depend on the
Insect gaits are usually obtained by two approaches: the centralized and the decentralized control architectures. Centralized controllers directly specify transitions of all legs, whereas in decentralized architectures, six nodes (legs) are connected in a parallel network; gaits arise by the interaction between neighbouring legs.
List of robots
See also
References
- ^ "RiSE robot". Carnegie Mellon University.
- ^ "ATHLETE". JPL. Archived from the original on 2006-09-29.
External links
- Poly-pedal Laboratory at Berkeley (USA).
- Biological Cybernetics/Theoretical Biology (Germany).