Dynamics and trajectory planning of a planar flipping robot

In this paper, a new planar one-legged robot model is firstly proposed, which, unlike previous one-legged robot with springy legs, consists of three revolute joints. Then a novel manner of one-legged locomotion (i.e., ballistic flip) is designed for this robot. A complete flipping gait cycle is composed of four phases: two stance phases and two flight phases. During flight phases, no active control is needed on the knee joint. Rotational motion and translational motion is decoupled from each other in flight phases. Landing of the robot is regarded as an inelastic impulsive impact. During stance phases, the robot model can be simplified as a two-degree-of-freedom rigid manipulator. Based on analysis of kinematics and dynamics of the flip robot, trajectory planning of cyclic flip gait is formulized as a problem of numerical optimization subject to nonlinear constraints such as positive reaction force of ground and finite torque of the joints. One potential application of the flipping robot is space exploration, which urgently requires the legged locomotive robots to be light-weighted and energy efficient.