Adaptive Gait for Large Rough Terrain of a Leg-Wheel Robot (Fifth Report: Integrated Gait)

A leg-wheel robot has mechanically separated four legs and two wheels, and it performs high mobility and stability on rough terrains. The adaptive gait for large rough terrains of the leg-wheel robot is composed of three gait strategies. In this paper, the integrated gait of the normal gait and the adaptive gaits for large rough terrain is proposed. The proposed gait has following features: 1. There is a path from a gait to any other gait. 2. The robot does not fall into the endless loop of detection, because it moves whenever it detects something. 3. A gait changes finally to step-over gait which has the maximum ability of movement when the robot can not move. The robot can move on rough terrains where irregular ruggednesses up to 0.2 m in height or depth exist by using the integrated gait. The effectiveness of the integrated gait is verified through simulations and experiments.(1)