Walking programming for an electropneumatic biped robot

An anthropomorphic ElectroPneumatic WAlking Robot named as EP-WAR has been designed and built at the Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics of Cassin o University. Stability problems have been solved by a suitable use of suct ion-cups, which have been installed on the underside of each foot. Each leg mechanism has been designed and composed by a pantograph with a double art iculated parallelogram. The EP-WAR mechatronic design has been conceived by using a pneumatic actuation and electronic control via PLC (Programmable L ogic Controller). In addition a suitable programming technique has been dev eloped in order to increase the flexibility of the EP-WAR prototype that ca n walk along any trajectory in the plane of the motion. Three walking modul es and subroutine programs have been introduced and discussed for straight line path, right turn and left turn. Any walking path can be easily obtaine d by assembling the proposed subroutines in a suitable main program. (C) 19 99 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.