Modeling and Fuzzy Control of One-legged Somersaulting Robot

Research on legged robots has developed rapidly in the recent decades. One-legged robots, unlike multi-legged ones, have only one type of motion, called hopping. Hopping motion is generally divided into stance and flight phases. Switching between these two phases represents a hybrid dynamic model. Dynamic stabilization of hopping motion is a challenging control issue. Most of one-legged hopping robots studied in the past are able to hop with their one springy leg. In this paper, a novel one-legged robot is introduced and studied with two springs on the two sides. The one-legged somersaulting robot is able to hop with both springy sides. This ability causes lower energy consumption in passing obstacles and a longer step length in comparison with well-known SLIP robots with hopping motion stemming from the fact that it only has one rotary actuator. Fuzzy logic control is applied to achieve a stable limit cycle in the robot's somersaulting motion.