A Four-Leg Locomotion Robot for Heavy Load Transportation

This paper proposes the new innovated 4-legged locomotion mechanism with pantograph-jack structure as its leg. This study aims at developing the practical robotic system, especially focusing on the carrying task of heavy load. Transportation of heavy load occupies the important parts among the real applications such as disaster relief and rescue activities. The jack-like leg enables to hold a heavy object without any active control and consumption of energy. Additionally, it can lift up an object easily by smaller power than weight of object. Prototype uses the crawl walking which is a typical locomotion way of a reptile, and it has achieved this step by bending its waist. The prototype realized the 0.001 m/s walking and payload of 45 kg. This paper deals with the concept of locomotion mechanism with jack-type leg, details of design of prototype and some properties by some basic experiments

I. Introduction

Various applications of locomotion robots have recently been introduced into many practical fields. Especially, mobile robots in new applications such as disaster relief and demining are required to apply them into the practical use. Such kinds of robots must be mounted the movability at any rough terrain. For such request, the leg locomotion is advantageous to move on irregular terrain.