Development of Disaster Response Robot for Extreme Environments

-4th Report: Proposition of Crawling Motion for Four-limbed Robot-

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel locomotion style to move on rubble with the possibility of collapse for a life-sized four-limbed robot. A locomotion style which can increase normalized energy (NE) stability margin seems to be useful to move in extreme environments. Therefore, we propose crawling motion, which makes robot’s body contact on the ground. The robot moves four end-effectors forward simultaneously, lifts the body and moves forward. Verification of the proposed crawling motion is conducted through simulations with a dynamics simulator on rubble.