SOFTWARE ALGORITHMS FOR ENHANCING STABILITY DURING LOCOMOTION OF A WALKING ROBOT

This study develops and tests a method for improving the stability of a quadruped walking robot during straight-line motion by upgrading its control algorithms. Such robots are widely used in military applications, rescue operations, construction, industry, research, and even daily life. Ensuring stability during movement is a critical issue for all types of walking robots, but it is particularly challenging for bipeds and quadrupeds due to their structural features and operational modes. In the investigation of quadruped robot stability, it was determined that stability can be conditionally divided into dynamic and static stability. Dynamic stability refers to maintaining balance during body movement, while static stability pertains to maintaining balance in a stationary position. A common issue for quadrupeds is falling onto the lifted limb, which is a problem of static stability since it results from losing a support point without body movement. The paper reviews recent studies and concludes that proposed stability enhancement methods for walking robots can be broadly categorized into structural and algorithmic approaches. Structural methods are commonly used for robot stabilization but are not universal, as they require modifications to the design. Algorithmic methods are more versatile, but their application is often limited by the robot’s computational capacity, power constraints, and lack of necessary sensors. After analyzing the limitations of existing methods, a stabilization method was proposed that does not require structural modifications or significant computational resources. The essence of the method is shifting the center of mass from its initial position within the support triangle formed by the legs in the swing phase. This is achieved by repositioning the support points of the limbs toward the lifted limb. The proposed method was implemented in the robot's motion control algorithm and tested on a quadruped robot model that previously exhibited stability loss when transferring a limb to a new position. A test algorithm was developed, defining a sequence of movements for straight-line locomotion, and an analysis was conducted on the impact of center of mass shifting on the time required to traverse a fixed-length section. The conducted studies demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.