Planning of Legged Race-walking Gait for an ePaddle-based Amphibious Robot

To enhance the mobility of the rescue robot in amphibious environments, an eccentric paddle mechanism (ePaddle) has been proposed as the locomotion module for utilizing versatile locomotion gaits. In this paper, we focus on a unique legged race-walking gait among all the potential gaits of an ePaddle-based amphibious robot. This gait has advantages in stability and energy efficiency. We present kinematic-based methods for achieving race-walking by one ePaddle module. A planar path tracking method using race-walking gait is then proposed. Ideas of the race-walking gait as well as its planning methods are finally verified by simulations.