Minimizing energy in hexapod

Advanced Robotics 23 (2009) 681–704

www.brill.nl/ar

Full paper
Minimizing Energy Consumption in Hexapod Robots
P. Gonzalez de Santos ∗ , E. Garcia, R. Ponticelli and M. Armada
Institute of Industrial Automation — CSIC, Department of Automatic Control, Ctra. Campo Real
Km 0,2, 28500 Arganda del Rey, Madrid, Spain
Received 15 July 2008; revised 25 November 2008; accepted 3 December 2008

Abstract
Minimization of energy expenditure in autonomous mobile robots for industrial and service applications is a topic of huge importance, as it is the best way of lengthening mission time without modifying the power supply. This paper presents a method to minimize the energy consumption of a hexapod robot on irregular terrain. An energy-consumption model is derived for statically stable gaits before applying minimization criteria. Then, some parameters that define the foot trajectories of the legged robot are computed to minimize energy expenditure during every half a locomotion cycle. The method is evaluated using an accurate geometric model of the SILO-6 walking robot.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2009
Keywords
Energy efficiency, energy consumption, legged locomotion, mobile robots, optimization methods

1. Introduction
An autonomous mobile robot is an intelligent machine with the skills to perform motion in an unstructured environment without explicit human intervention. Its intelligent autonomy is provided by efficient algorithms capable of coping with many different situations. Nevertheless, a real-application autonomous robot must also exhibit energy autonomy; the greater the autonomy, the better. Both sorts of autonomies are required for real operative mobile robots. Intelligent autonomy is provided by sensors and algorithms. Energy autonomy is mainly accomplished using efficient power supplies. However, the control algorithms that mobile robots use can help lengthen the duty cycle of power supplies and so