GAIT PLANNING FOR ONE-LEGGED ARTICULATED HOPPING ROBOT

A gait planning procedure for planar one-legged articulated hopping robot is proposed in this paper. Its major advantage is the capability to design the take-off velocities of the mass center of the robot in X and Z axes, which is of quite importance for the schedule of hopping height and distance. To this end, a simplified robot model with a concentrated mass and a virtual telescopic leg connecting the hip and the toe of the robot is given first. With the application of cubic spline interpolation, the gaits of the robot on the ground and in the air are then both obtained from the inverse kinematics of the simplified robot model. Finally, the planned gaits of the robot are verified by the animation of a Matlab SimMechanics model of the hopping robot.