Analysis and Structure Design of the Underwater Hexapod Robot Leg

In this paper, the leg structure design of an underwater hexapod robot was carried out based on the establishment of the dynamics model considering the influence of the water dynamics. The basic leg structure was selected and the kinematics model of the leg was analyzed firstly to obtain the leg link velocities and the Jacobian matrix. Based on the link velocities and the Jacobian matrix obtained, the leg dynamics model of the underwater robot considering the water influence was constructed through the combination of the Lagrange equation and Morison equation. With the dynamics model established, simulation experiments were carried out based on Fluent and Adams platforms to get the maximum joint torques. According to the maximum joint torques achieved, appropriate joint motors were chosen to finally fulfill the detailed leg structure design.