A Novelty Crawling Robot with Hybrid Locomotion

In this study, a new design approach for a multi terrain-abilities crawling robot is presented. With a slender body and four legs, the robot is able to perform both Serpentine and quadruped locomotion. To generate the locomotion, a central pattern generator (CPG) inspired controller is adopted. According to biology studies, CPGs are a set of neuronal circuits, which are responsible for producing rhythmic motion employed in animal locomotion. The main feature of proposed locomotion generation approach is the use of a set of coupled Hopf Oscillators to imitate of CPG in a nerve system. Moreover, to deal with dynamically changing environments, a feedback based fuzzy logic control strategy is investigated. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed robot system is verified through the experiments of a crawling robot prototype.