Gait parameter adaptation to environmental perturbations in quadrupedal robots

Abstract

Quadrupedal robots working outdoors are very slow robots prone to tum- ble down in the presence of perturbations. This paper presents a novel gait- adaptation method that enables walking-machine gaits to autonomously adapt to environmental perturbations, including the slope of the terrain, by ¯nding the gait parameters that maximize robot's dynamic stability. Experiments with the SILO4 quadruped robot are presented and show how robot stability is more robust when the proposed approach is used for diferent external forces and sloping terrains.