Title: Control of legged vehicles

Authors: N.D. Ebrahimi

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA

Abstract: Since the off-road mobility characteristics of wheeled or tracked vehicles are generally considered to be inferior to those of man or cursorial animals, it is desirable to design vehicles that can be adjustable to variations in terrain profile. The proposed solution for this need is legged locomotion. Research on legged vehicles has focused on obtaining the number of legs (and gait patterns) for maximum stability of the vehicle as well as establishing control schemes for monitoring the walking process. In spite of several years of research by a number of scientists, a practial legged vehicle is not yet commercially available. In this paper the results of a state-of-the-art review of literature on walking vehicles are presented.

Keywords: legged vehicles; legged vehicle control; off-road vehicles; terrain profile measurement; vehicle design; walking vehicles; legged locomotion; walking robots; robot locomotion; robot control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.1985.061396

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 1985 Vol.6 No.4/5, pp.573 - 576

Published online: 25 May 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article