Spike: A six legged cube style robot

Abstract

This paper describes a six legged cube based robot named 'Spike', which uses three axes of symmetry with a collinear pair of legs mounted on each axis. Spike is designed to implement a novel form of locomotion which uses a tilting and falling motion as a result of leg movements to form its gait. Due to the triangular symmetry inherent in the robot's footprint, each step the robot takes is limited to one of three directions. At rest, the robot has three points of contact with the ground and all sides share equal length to form a tripedal stance. The gait is generated by directing a single leg toward the bisector of the opposing side, causing the robot to tumble, and fall into a new leg configuration. It was found that the robot was able to move along an angle of trajectory, where the accuracy of following the trajectory over time was dependant on the number of steps made. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.