• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
• /
• v.53 no.8
• /
• pp.585-593
• /
• 2004

Fault-tolerant gait planning in legged locomotion is to design gaits with which legged robots can maintain static stability and motion continuity against a failure in a leg. For planning a robust and deadlock-free fault-tolerant gait, kinematic constraints caused by a failed leg should be closely examined with respect to remaining mobility of the leg. In this paper, based on the authors's previous results, deadlock avoidance scheme for fault-tolerant gait planning is proposed for a hexapod robot walking over even terrain. The considered fault is a locked joint failure, which prevents a joint of a leg from moving and makes it locked in a known position. It is shown that for guaranteeing the existence of the previously proposed fault-tolerant tripod gait of a hexapod robot, the configuration of the failed leg must be within a range of kinematic constraints. Then, for coping with failure situations where the existence condition is not satisfied, the previous fault-tolerant tripod gait is improved by including the adjustment of the foot trajectory. The foot trajectory adjustment procedure is analytically derived to show that it can help the fault-tolerant gait avoid deadlock resulting from the kinematic constraint and does not make any harmful effect on gait mobility. The post-failure walking problem of a hexapod robot with the normal tripod gait is addressed as a case study to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
• /
• v.52 no.12
• /
• pp.689-695
• /
• 2003

Fault-tolerance is an important design criterion for robotic systems operating in hazardous or remote environments. This paper addresses the issue of tolerating a locked joint failure in gait planning for hexapod walking machines which have symmetric structures and legs in the form of an articulated arm with three revolute joints. A locked joint failure is one for which a joint cannot move and is locked in place. If a failed joint is locked, the workspace of the resulting leg is constrained, but hexapod walking machines have the ability to continue static walking. A strategy of fault-tolerant tripod gait is proposed and, as a specific form, a periodic tripod gait is presented in which hexapod walking machines have the maximum stride length after a locked failure. The adjustment procedure from a normal gait to the proposed fault-tolerant gait is shown to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.457-463
• /
• 2009

In this paper, a novel foot force distribution algorithm for hexapod walking robots is presented. The considered hexapod robot has fault-tolerant tripod gaits with a failed leg in locked-joint failure. The principle of the proposed algorithm is to minimize the slippage of the leg that determines the stability margin of the fault-tolerant gaits. The fault-tolerant tripod gait has a drawback that it has less stability margin than normal gaits. Considering this drawback, we use the feature that there are always three supporting legs, and by incorporating the theory of Zero-Interaction Force, we calculate the foot forces analytically without resort to any optimization technique. In a case study, the proposed algorithm is compared with a conventional foot force distribution method and its applicability is demonstrated.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
• /
• v.43 no.3 s.309
• /
• pp.16-24
• /
• 2006

In this paper, fault-tolerant gait planning of a hexapod robot for walking over irregular terrain is presented. The failure concerned in this paper is a locked joint failure for which a joint in a leg cannot move and is locked in place. Based on the previously proposed fault-tolerant tripod gait for walking over even terrain, fault-tolerant follow-the-leader(FTL) gaits are proposed for a hexapod robot with a failed leg to be able to walk over two-dimensional rough terrain, maintaining static stability and fault tolerance. The proposed FTL gait can have maximum stride length for a given foot position of a failed leg, and yields better ditch crossing ability than the previously developed gaits. The applicability of the proposed FTL gait is verified by using computer graphics simulations.