DEVELOPMENT OF MODELS AND ALGORITHMS FOR CONTROLLING A HEXAPOD ROBOT BASED ON ARDUINO MEGA2560 MICROCONTROLLER

The paper presents a practical application of Arduino Mega2560 in implementing a six-legged walking robot control system. A thorough analysis of the field reveals the importance of adopting such an approach to executive mechanism design. The paper reviews analogues from various manufacturers, highlighting their pros and cons; identifies essential constants affecting the positioning of the hexapod robot and key coordinates of its limbs; presents a modular system architecture, comprising distinct functional blocks. Developed algorithms control the automatic robot movement: the main operating algorithm determines critical moments of positioning. The algorithm for moving the main actuation mechanisms specifies the sequence of translational movements of the limbs, taking into account all predefined parameters; this algorithm considers and analyses stepping distance and amplitude computation. Additionally, the paper suggests an inverse kinematic algorithm, which calculates servomotor angles for limb segments based on target endpoint coordinates, yielding precise angular rotation values of servomotor angles. The developed algorithms are implemented programmatically as a hexapod control system based on microcontroller in Arduino IDE environment using C++ language.