Motion planning and simulation verification of a hydraulic hexapod robot based on reducing energy/flow consumption

Minimizing the energy and flow consumption is significant to realize the locomotion of a hydraulically actuated hexapod robot for mobile field applications. This paper proposes a low energy cost foot trajectory planning method to realize a constant velocity of the body and optimize the power and flow consumption of a hexapod robot. A dephased gait generating method is also proposed to decrease the flow demand. A simulation platform for hexapod robots was developed using C++ and based on the vortex physics engine. Power and flow consumption models were derived to verify the proposed methods. The simulation platform was used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods at optimizing the power and flow consumption.