C-legged hexapod robot design guidelines based on energy analysis

Abstract

C-legged hexapod robots offer a balanced trade-off between the robust stability of wheeled robots and the increased-motion capabilities of legged robots, and therefore, are currently of great interest. This article investigates the impact of mass, leg radius, and angular velocity on the energy consumption of C-legged hexapod robots, in order to develop a set of design guidelines that maximize the robot’s performance. The kinematic model of a single C-leg system is obtained and used to determine the system’s energy consumption associated with gravitational potential energy (GPE) and kinetic energy (KE) variations. Both the kinematic model and energy model are validated in a custom-made test bench. Our results show that the kinematic model very accurately predicts the trajectory of the system in space, but due to the varying load experienced by the motor, the system lags compared to the model predictions. Furthermore, the energy model has been also validated experimentally and successfully predicts the motor consumption periods. Using the energy model, it has been concluded that the angular velocity of the leg and the leg radius have an expo-nential relationship with motor peak power demand—directly affecting the motor selection. On the other hand, the mass is inversely proportional to the robot efficiency, and therefore, must be kept as low as possible.