Effects of Elastic Joints on Performances of a Close-Chained Rod Rolling Robot

In rolling experiments,the performances of spider-like robot are limited greatly by its motors’driving ability;meanwhile,the ground reaction forces are so great that they damaged the rods.In this paper,we solve above problems both mechanically and by control.Firstly,we design the parameters of the central pattern generator(CPG)network based on the kinematics of the robot to enable a smooth rolling trajectory.And we also analyze the kinematic rolling and dynamic rolling briefly.Secondly,we add torsion springs to the passive joints of the spider-like robot aiming to make use of its energy storage capacity to compensate the insufficient torque.The simulation results show that the optimized CPG control parameters can reduce the fluctuation of the mass center and the ground reaction forces.The torsion spring can reduce the peak torque requirements of the actuated joints by 50%.