Experimental Verification of Underactuated Sliding Locomotion Robot with Quick Return Linkage

For the purpose of achieving stable locomotion on a slippery level surface, an underactuated locomotion robot with a quick-return (QR) linkage was proposed in our previous study. In this paper, we discuss the validity of it. First, we introduce the modeling and control of the underactuated locomotion robot and report the detail of a developed experimental machine and environment. In order to achieve stable locomotion with a simple control input, the QR linkage is attached to the inside of the body since a unique acceleration of the QR linkage. Then, we perform several experiments for verifying the numerical result and showed that the experimental result is highly consistent with the numerical result.