Development of a Quadruped Walking Robot TITAN XI for Steep Slopes Operation

—Conceptual Design and Basic Experiment of Leg Driving Mechanism—

Abstract

This paper describes the basic system and design of a quadruped walking robot TITAN XI. TITAN XI is designed to perform construction task on the operation site of steep slopes. Such a task is strongly demanded especially in Japan to construct highway in mountainous area. TITAN XI will be suspended by tethers on the steep slopes and walks around by four legs to avoid the damage of the ferro-concrete frames and perform the task to drill deep holes for rock bolts. We discussed fundamental design problems of TITAN XI; the selection of the system configuration, design of the leg mechanism and hydraulic driving system, suitable standard gait based on the intermittent crawl and the total controlling system. We have constructed mechanical model of TITAN XI 7, 000 [kg] in weight, and 3.7 [m] in leg length, and we have successfully demonstrated very basic walk of TITAN XI on even ground with the average velocity of 2 [cm/s] .