Motion Planning of a Walking Platform Designed to Locomote on Natural Terrain

摘要

A generic motion planning scheme for a statically stable multilegged platformdesigned to locomote on natural terrain and controlled by a human operator is presented. In the scheme, the motion of the legs is planned according to the planned body motion. The motion of the body is divided into a terrain following and terrain adapting motion. Leg motion planning is divided into four functional units: support trajectory generation, foothold planning, transfer trajectory planning and support force generation. The kinematics of motion planning is evaluated in a 3D visual simulator build for a PC environment. The performance of motion planning is also evaluated in a dynamic environment with an experimental, six-legged vehicle. MECANT, which is fully self-contained and capable for outdoor locomotion. The simulations show that the kinematics of motion planning without perception capability works on an unstructured terrain. The field trials with MECANT confirm the robustness of the presented motion planning.