Obstacle Avoidance of Quadruped Robots with Consideration to the Order of Swing Leg

Legged robots can avoid an obstacle by crawling-over or striding, according to the obstacle’s nature and the current state of the robot. Thus, it can be observed that the mobility efficiency to reach a destination is improved by such action. Moreover, if robots have many legs like 4-legged or 6-legged types, then the robot movement range is affected by the order of swing leg. In this paper, the avoidance action of a quadruped robot is generated by a neural network (NN) whose inputs are information on the position of the destination, the obstacle configuration and the robot's self-state. To realize a free gait in static walking, the order of swing leg is determined using an another NN whose inputs are the amount of movements and the robot’s self-state. The design parameter of the latter NN is adjusted by using genetic algorithm (GA).