Foot Structure with Divided Flat Soles and Springs for Legged Robots and Experimental Verification

Abstract

Practical ambulation must be realized by walking robots to enable social and industrial support by walking robots in human living environments. A four-legged robot that walks through rough terrain effectively does not erase the fact that most legged robots – particularly biped robots – have difficulty negotiating rough terrain. We focus below on a foot structure and landing control for enabling any type of legged robot to walk through rough terrain. When a walking robot lands on the ground, it is difficult to detect the detailed geometry and dynamic properties of the ground surface. The new foot structure we propose adapts to ground surfaces that have different geometries and hardness. The foot has four-part flat soles. The landing controller we apply to a robot with our proposed foot structure increases the stability of contact with the ground. We verify the effectiveness of our proposed foot structure in experiments.