Synthesis and Analysis of a Walking Machine (Robot) Leg Mechanism on a Rough Terrain

Abstract

In today’s human life, there is a high demand to automate labor work. The high cost of this labor work and its low efficiency puts major pressure on the competitiveness of automated machines. The present robotization of this labor entered a high level of technological willingness with a greater significance of sustainable productivity in economic development. Walking machine (robot) is a type of locomotion that operates by means of legs and /or wheels on rough terrain or flat surface. The performance of legged machines is greater than wheels or tracked walking machines on the unstructured terrain. These machines are used for data collections in a variety of areas such as large agricultural sector, dangerous and rescue areas for a human. The leg mechanism of a walking machine has a different joint in which a number of motors are used to actuate all DOF of the legs. Due to this, the weight of an individual motor of the machine leg results in high energy consumption for driving. The main objective of this study is synthesis and analysis of a walking machine (robot) leg mechanism on rough terrain. The leg mechanism is developed using integration of linkages through kinematic synthesis to reduce the complexity of the design. The developed leg mechanism enables the robot to walk on rough terrain. Among others, its kinematic mechanisms are analyzed using Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) convention approach. Symbolic computations are also implemented to parametrically optimize the motion parameters of the robot leg mechanism. The equation of motion is derived from the dynamic analysis using the Euler-Lagrange method which involves kinetic and potential energy expressions. In order to validate the performance of the robot leg mechanism and motion behaviors, kinematic motion analysis in SolidWorks and MATLAB (academic licensed) are used. The leg mechanism used is effective for rough terrain areas because it is capable of walking on terrain with different amplitude due to surface toughness and aerodynamics. Finally, the design developed as part of this thesis is better in terms of its simple mechanism, less energy consumption, easy to manufacture, easy to walk on rough terrain, though it has limitations such as detail analysis which is planned to be considered in its future work