Gait Planning of Quadruped Walking and Climbing Robot in Convex Corner Environment

When a robot navigates in the real environment, it frequently meets various environments that can be expressed by simple geometrical shapes such as fiat floor, uneven floor, floor with obstacles, slopes, concave or convex corners, etc. Among them, the convex corner composed of two plain surfaces is the most difficult one for the robot to negotiate. In this paper, we propose a gait planning algorithm to help the robot overcome the convex environment. The trajectory of the body is derived from the maximum distance between the edge boundary of the corner and the bottom of the robot when it travels in the convex environment. Additionally, we find the relation between kinematical structure of the robot and its ability of avoiding collision. The relation is realized by considering the workspace and the best posture of the robot in the convex structure. To provide necessary information for the algorithm, we use an IR sensor attached in the leg of the robot to perceive the convex environment. The validity of the gait planning algorithm is verified through simulations and the performance is demonstrated using a quadruped walking robot, called "MRWALLSPECT III"( Multifunctional Robot for WALL inSPECTion version 3).