Design of six-legged walking robot, Little Crabster for underwater walking and operation

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a ground test robot platform to study a multi-legged walking robot capable of precise proximity exploration and operations under a shallow sea in the presence of a strong tidal current environment. For both underwater walking and complex operations, a six-legged robot that uses two legs as manipulators during underwater operations is proposed. The dimensions, joint structure, range of motion, and mass distribution of the robot are determined by considering biological data, and then suitable joint actuators are chosen through a simple force analysis. In addition, a main controller, a communication bus, motor controllers, sensors, and a battery are chosen to build the whole control system. The detailed design is performed using 2D/3D computer aided design (CAD) software, and the robot is finally built by machining the parts and assembling them. The degree of design completion is proved by basic walking experiments and future works are addressed.