A Novel Multi-Gait Strategy for Stable and Efficient Quadruped Robot Locomotion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-gait transition strategy for quadruped robots that optimizes both energy efficiency and stability across various terrains and speeds, inspired by natural gait transitions.

Contribution

It presents a novel gait selection and transition mechanism that combines CoT and stability considerations using gait mapping, affine transformations, and a finite state machine.

Findings

Outperforms baseline methods in energy efficiency and stability

Effective gait switching across different terrains and velocities

Improves quadruped robot locomotion robustness

Abstract

Taking inspiration from the natural gait transition mechanism of quadrupeds, devising a good gait transition strategy is important for quadruped robots to achieve energy-efficient locomotion on various terrains and velocities. While previous studies have recognized that gait patterns linked to velocities impact two key factors, the Cost of Transport (CoT) and the stability of robot locomotion, only a limited number of studies have effectively combined these factors to design a mechanism that ensures both efficiency and stability in quadruped robot locomotion. In this paper, we propose a multi-gait selection and transition strategy to achieve stable and efficient locomotion across different terrains. Our strategy starts by establishing a gait mapping considering both CoT and locomotion stability to guide the gait selection process during locomotion. Then, we achieve gait switching in time by introducing affine transformations for gait parameters and a designed finite state machine to build the switching order. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted on using our strategy with changing terrains and velocities, and the results indicate that our proposed strategy outperforms baseline methods in achieving simultaneous efficiency in locomotion by considering CoT and stability.