Morphology Design and Dimensional Synthesis of a Hexapod Robot

The legged robot can adapt to challenging terrains such as stairs and debris. The hexapod robot has better stability, payload capability, and fault-tolerant ability than the biped and quadruped robot. This paper proposes a novel hexapod robot composed of two walking platforms and an actively actuated waist joint. The mechanical topology of the robot is determined by comprehensively considering the walking stability, energy consumption, and operating dexterity. The kinematics of the modular leg mechanism and the robot body are analyzed. The robot dimension, including the leg and body dimensions, affects terrain adaptability. The requirements on the robot dimension to cross a ditch with target width and traverse a step barrier with target height are proposed, respectively. The leg and body dimensions are determined by simultaneously considering these two scenarios. Virtual simulations and prototype experiments are conducted to verify the feasibility of the robot dimension design.