Kinematic Analysis and Simulation of a Cockroach Robot

This paper does researches into the configuration of our cockroach robot, its kinematics, and kinematic control. First, we design the cockroach robot, which has six legs with 18 DOFs in total. Each leg has 4 joints, coxa, femur, tibia, and tarsus. Based on cockroach robot kinematic analysis, screw theory, and POE (Production-of-Exponential) formula, this paper is focused on the inverse kinematics which uses Paden-Kahan sub-problems to directly obtain the displacement of joint angles. The forward kinematics derives the relationship between joint angles according to the natural restricts. Then, by using POE formula, it deduces the body pose and realizes online trajectory control and planning. What is more, this paper also demonstrates the inverse and forward kinematics, which lay a solid foundation for further kinematic analysis and trajectory planning.