Continuous Shape Changing Locomotion of 32-legged Spherical Robot

Abstract

Shape changing robot is an approach towards locomotion on uncertain terrain due to its omni-directional features. However, the current locomotion method for such robots rely on discontinuous rolling. We propose a free form locomotion: an omni directional continuous crawling for deformable robots. This method introduce continuous shifting of contact surface similar to amoeba movement. A Mochibot that has thirty two telescopic legs is developed to verify the proposed locomotion method. Through the experiments, we have confirmed that the robot can track smooth paths: straight, smooth, and hand written curves. We also evaluate errors between desired and measured trajectories of the robot.