Locomotion and Path Planning for Roller Skating Dog Robot

Abstract

Bipeds and Quadrupeds take over the majority of leg inspired robots in the robotics industry; from complex path planning to complex algorithm design for purpose-built leg based robots, which are one of the major areas of research. Application- oriented robots and dynamic control of robots play an important role when coming to legged robots. Legged robots are incorporated recently in industrial inspection and surveillance. Due to highly flexible design and adaptive situation handling of various conditions, these robots are powerful in navigating and moving across the desired path. Presented here is a 4 legged dog robot that is designed around the Dynamixel ecosystem. The ecosystem not only gives us the flexibility to control the motors easily and robustly but also helps us to incorporate mathematical modeling and mathematical design of 4 legged robots. These actuators also give the flexibility of torque and speed control thus bringing additional dimensions to the motion planning. The robot dog structure is essentially designed to skate and glide over a flat surface; weight balancing and motion planning not only helps in handling and making the locomotion smoother, but also allows us to stabilize the bot at a much higher tolerance.