Advanced Turning Maneuver of a Many-Legged Robot Using Pitchfork Bifurcation

Legged robots have excellent terrestrial mobility for traversing diverse environments and, thus, the potential to be deployed in a wide variety of scenarios. However, they are susceptible falling and leg malfunction during locomotion. Although use large number legs can overcome these problems, it makes body long leads many being constrained contact with ground support body, which impedes maneuverability. To improve locomotion maneuverability such robots, this study focuses on dynamic instability, induces rapid movement changes, uses 12-legged robot flexible axis. Our previous work found that straight walk becomes unstable through Hopf bifurcation when body-axis flexibility is changed, undulations. Furthermore, we developed simple controller based showed instability facilitates turning robot. In study, newly pitchfork changed way different from our work. addition, transition into curved walk, whose curvature controlled by flexibility. We characteristics demonstrated perform maneuver superior controller. This provides novel design principle maneuverable many-legged using intrinsic properties.