Control of a Six-Legged Robot Walking on Abrupt Terrain - Robotics and Automation, 1996. Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference on

Legged robots are well suited t o walk on dif icult terrains at the expense of requiring complex control syst ems to walk even on flat surfaces. But simply walking on a fiat surface is not worth using a legged robot. I t should be assumed that walking on abrupt terrain is the typical situation for a legged robot. Wi th this premise in mind, we have developed a robust controller f o r a six-legged robot that allows it t o walk over dif icult terrains i n an autonomous way, with a lamiled use of sensory information (no vision is involved). This walk controller can be driven by an upper level which need not be concerned about the details of foot placement or leg movements, taking care only of high level aspects such as global speed and direction.