A Noval Gait Planning Strategy for Wheel-legged Quadruped Robots

The wheel-legged quadruped robot has high mobility efficiency and strong obstacle-crossing ability, which combines the advantages of both wheeled and legged robots. Most robots do not have satisfactory collaborative planning strategies for wheeled and legged mobile mechanisms. This article proposes a wheel step composite gait planning algorithm for quadruped robots, which utilizes the advantage of wheel mechanisms providing support during movement. When a single leg is in the swing phase, the positions of the remaining three wheels are adjusted through the wheeled mobile mechanisms. Analyze the change of the center of mass (COM) of the robot when a single leg is moving, and project the COM on the plane formed by the other three footholds. By optimizing the best foothold of the supporting legs, the stability margin and the robot’s anti-overturning ability are improved. Compared with the original method, the climbing slope of the robot during the single-leg swing is increased by 14.6 degrees, and the stability margin is increased from -52.8mm to 130mm.