Influence of Link Lengths & Input Angles on the Foot Locus Trajectory of Klann Mechanism

Abstract

Locomotive drive mechanisms for robots have been an active research area in the field mobile robotics. Several drive mechanisms such as wheeled, legged, hybrid & reconfigurable mechanisms have been extensively studied. The legged locomotive drive mechanism has several advantages to its credit & it is often bio-inspired. The disadvantage of legged locomotive drive mechanism in general is it is often considered as complex in design due to its multi degrees of freedom which requires complex control scheme. This has led roboticists to explore minimal legged locomotive drive mechanisms consisting of single degrees of freedom. The present work focuses on synthesis and analysis of one such planar mechanism such as klann mechanism for a mobile robot application. In this work, we have synthesized the various linkages of klann mechanism to find the optimal foot locus trajectory. The synthesis and analysis of mechanism is performed using SAM (Synthesis and analysis of mechanism) software. We have described influence of various parameters such linkage length and input crank angle on the foot locus. We have compared the foot locus trajectory for three different foot locus by performing the kinematic analysis. Various parameters such as position, velocity and acceleration of linkages are compared & illustrated in detail. The information provided in this work will help the roboticists to select appropriate link length for klann mechanism to obtain various foot locus designs. This information may be further used to design efficient legged locomotive drive mechanisms for various terrain conditions.