Trotting Gait Control of the Quadruped Robot with an Elastic Linkage

In order to improve the mobility and shock resistance of quadruped robots, a quadruped robot with elastic linkages and a cable-driven system is designed, named LCS (linkage-cable-spring) quadruped robot. And a speed control strategy is proposed based on the stance angle, and also the centroid height control strategy based on energy compensation, referring to SLIP (spring loaded inverted pendulum) model. The motion stability of trotting gait is improved by the attitude control strategy. Finally, a steady trotting gait is realized by simulation under a given forward speed. Meanwhile, an experimental prototype platform of the LCS quadruped robot is built, and the walking experiment of the stepping and trotting gaits is completed. The experimental results show that the roll and pitch angles of the LCS quadruped robot can be controlled within 2°, and the robot can steadily negotiate small obstacles with the size of 10mm×10mm.