Estimation of the contact forces between the hexapod legs and the ground during walking in the tripod gait

The paper is devoted to the dynamical modelling of the hexapod robot walking on a flat and hard ground. The main goal is to determine time series of reaction forces acting on individual legs of the robot during tripod gait often used both by the six-legged insects as well as mobile walking robots found in engineering applications. The movement of the considered robot is realized by the kinematic excitation of its legs using the so-called Central Pattern Generator (CPG) method. The paper demonstrates that there are different contact forces and overload acting on the robot, resulting from different models working as a CPG. The mentioned forces belong to the important issues that should be taken into account when the robot locomotion on the unknown terrain is planned.