Development of Wheel-Spider-Inspired Hexapod Robot Realizing Walking and Rolling Locomotion

Abstract

To realize a robot that can move at high speed according to the environment while maintaining the traversability of a multi-legged robot, we propose a robot by focusing on the movement of the wheel spider. In this paper, we state the development of a wheel-spider-inspired hexapod robot which can walk and roll as locomotion way. For this robot, we have designed a mechanism to preserve both the capabilities of walking and rolling with arced outer shells. Its effectiveness has been verified through experiments, which have shown that the developed robot can move 0.04 meters per second when walking, and 0.25 meters per second while rolling. Moreover, the robot has realized a framework for deformation from walking to rolling, from rolling to walking. The results of our experiments demonstrate the potential abilities of the developed hexapod robot to adapt to different environments.