Constant-Posture/Velocity High-Speed Quadruped Walking by Counterweight Legs

Abstract

When a quadruped robot walks, there are two kinds of walking methods which are dynamic walking and static walking. Either of the walking modes cannot keep their trunk constant-posture/velocity at high-speed without a special mechanism. This is caused by the large inertial force generated from legs of the robot moving at high-speed. We propose a method to cancel inertial translational force by attaching a counterweight to the upper side of each leg and set gaits and leg trajectory appropriately so that the trunk keeps constant-posture/velocity in high-speed walking. Furthermore, as a result of kinetic analysis and actual machine experiments of the counterweight quadruped robot, we showed that it is possible to suppress the influence of the inertial translational force.