Motion Planning and Experimental Research of Rotor‐Leg‐Foot Hybrid Robot

ABSTRACT Robots have been widely used in antiterrorism, antiriot, search, and rescue. However, robots with single motion mode cannot meet the needs of complex tasks. Aiming at this problem, this paper designs and manufactures two models of rotor‐leg‐foot hybrid robot, which can freely switch motion modes according to needs and can fly flexibly with four rotors and crawl with four legs. The Type‐B prototype with 3 degree of freedom in one leg was selected for kinematic planning. A compound cycloid that can control both velocity and acceleration was utilized to plan the foot trajectory of the prototype, ensuring smooth motion without impact. Consequently, the motion parameters necessary for achieving a smooth crawl under a static gait were determined. The motion simulation and experiment under linear crawling were conducted. For the displacement in the y ‐direction, the relative error of the simulated solution and the planned values of one leg is 3.71%. and the relative error is about 10% after five cycles. The performance measurement of the physical prototype shows that the structure design of the rotor‐leg‐foot hybrid robot is reasonable.