Design and simulation of an easy operating leg for walking robots

Abstract

This paper presents a novel design for an articulated leg for mobile robots. The key idea is to develop the mechanism with a synthesis process directed to make the walking operation in an easy-control manner. To achieve this, the synthesis process has been done to decouple vertical and horizontal movement of the leg. Other advantage of this scheme is that driving motors can be better chosen for each task. A motor with high torque but low speed for vertical movement and a faster one with a lower output torque for horizontal movement. This scheme allows obtaining a high speed and loading capacity for the robot, with a relatively low power of the motors. The resulting mechanism also have a big workspace in order to allow working in any kind of terrains such highly unstructured terrains. © 2009 IEEE.