Control and environment sensing system for a six-legged robot

The architecture of the six legged robot is described in this paper. Robot kinematics for single leg and for the multi-legged platform is presented. For the control of the robot equipped with a number of sensors a three-layer control system has been designed. It consists of a host computer (in the first, teleoperation layer), of a single master microprocessor on the robot board (second layer) and of six microprocessors each of them for one leg (third layer). The communication between the first and the second layer is performed in duplex mode through the RS232 link via the Bluetooth channel, and between the second and the third control layer through the SPI bus. The robot sensing system consists of rotary potentiometers in each joint, of the leg as well as of a dual-axis accelerometer and gyroscope for platform orientation control. On board camera for remote vision is available.