A Three-Legged Reconfigurable Spherical Robot No.3

A three-legged reconfigurable spherical robot No.3 is presented in this paper. The robot has three legs kept inside the two half hemispherical shells. The three legs can be extended by splitting the top half of the hemispherical shells using a linear actuator installed at the core of the spherical shape. Each leg is consisted of three of revolute joints. When three legs are on ground the robot can perform three legs crawl-kick walking gait (one leg in front and two legs in rear) and butterfly walking gait (two legs in front and one leg in rear). The robot is able to move on flat ground and get over small barrier with butterfly walking gait with the speed of 5.33 cm/s and 1.57 cm/s respectively. For crawl-kick walking gait, the robot can move a little faster with the speed of 6.15 cm/s on flat ground and 1.51 cm/s for crossing barrier.

I. Introduction

Recently, robot technology is developed for exploration of hazardous environment [1]. Human-Robot interaction (HRI) become an integral part of exploration. The agency will send human and robot as partners. Exploration robot will visit hazardous environment first for obtaining the scientific data. After robot obtained data, the robot will assess the risks to human. Human will analyze data to upgrade exploration robot for next the visiting environment. Environment exploration activities may take long time to success. Making human-robot interaction (HRI) effective and efficient is important to future exploration. Humans and robots should be able to communicate about their plans, their goals, their abilities, and collaborate to solve exploration problems.