Locomotion Mode Transition Study of Ground Hybrid Robots

[Paper]

Abstract

This paper proposes a criterion based method to make possible the autonomous locomotion mode transition of ground hybrid robots. The criterion is developed based on both the internal states of robots (energy) and the external environmental information (obstacle height), which has been verified via the energy consumption comparison of two simplified locomotion models of rolling and walking locomotion. A method to determine the conditions under which locomotion transition should be performed is also discussed. Compared with current studies in this area, the novelty of the proposed method lies on considering external environmental information in developing the transition criterion, comparing and evaluating the alternative locomotion performance to determine the criterion threshold, and developing criteria based on generalizable robot parameters rather than particular designs, thus the proposed method can be implemented on various hybrid robots.