Distributed control system implementation for tetrahedral walker robots

Abstract

This work describes the implementation of distributed, modularized control hardware for an 8-tetrahedron robot. This design sought to make each actuating strut on the tetrahedral robot an independent unit. This allows for easy reconfiguration of the robot and better realizes the conceptualized goals for tetrahedral robotics. Both the electronic hardware and embedded software used for this implementation will be covered in detail. The performance gains of this implementation as opposed to a centralized control model will also be discussed.