Motion Planning Method for Quadruped Robots Walking on Unknown Rough Terrain

To deal with the adaptive and stable walking problem in the unstructured environment for the quadruped robot, a motion planning method faced to the unknown rough terrain is proposed for the quadruped robot. The walk gait is adopted, and the online trajectory planning is carried out based on the stability criterion zero moment point(ZMP). The parameters of the unknown terrain are estimated through the touchdown planning of the swinging leg and the perception strategy. Then, the length of each support leg can be adjusted in real time to control the position and posture of the trunk according to the current terrain, in order that the quadruped robot can adapt to the change of height and slope of the unknown terrain. Experimental results show that the robot can obtain good adaptability to the unknown rough terrain and satisfy the stability, which proves the validity and reliability of the proposed method.