Modeling and Simulation of Walking and Climbing Robots based on Stables States Transition Approach as Control Strategy

The paper presents a systemic approach of a walking robot behavior and control in uncertain environments, with application to a hexapod robot. For simplicity, this paper considers only the vertical xz-plane evolution taking into account that the structure is symmetrical in the horizontal xy-plane and the results can be easily extended. Based on the mathematical model of the robot, determined considering all the points in the xz-plane as being complex numbers, a new concept of walking called SSTA, "Stable States Transition Approach", is proposed. To apply this strategy it was necessary the robot interpretation as a Variable Causality Dynamic Systems (VCDS). Experimental results are implemented and verified in RoPa, a platform for simulation and design of walking robot control algorithms, to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control method.