Stable Stair-Climbing of a Quadruped Robot

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive gait planning approach for quadruped robots to achieve stable stair climbing, including transition, swing leg, body trajectories, and body orientation control, validated through simulation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gait planning method that ensures stability during stair climbing, rotation, and descent for quadruped robots, validated via simulation.

Findings

Robot successfully climbs stairs in simulation

Stable yaw rotation during stair climbing demonstrated

Robot can descend stairs while maintaining stability

Abstract

Synthesizing a stable gait that enables a quadruped robot to climb stairs is the focus of this paper. To this end, first a stable transition from initial to desired configuration is made based on the minimum number of steps and maximum use of the leg workspace to prepare the robot for the movement. Next, swing leg and body trajectories are planned for a successful stair- climbing gait. Afterwards, a stable spinning gait is proposed to change the orientation of the body. We simulate our gait planning algorithms on a model of quadruped robot. The results show that the robot is able to climb up stairs, rotate about its yaw axis, and climb down stairs while its stability is guaranteed.