Desing and implementation of an autonomous hexapod robot with obstacle avoidance and object finding/tracking

Abstract

The aim of this project is the design and implementation of an autonomous hexapod robot with obstacle avoidance and object finding/tracking. The robot has eighteen DOF1 with each leg having three DOF (degrees of freedom) and the frame is radially symmetric. The mechanical structure is made of an acrylic or Forex frame, steel rods and nineteen servo motors. For the electronic part, it’s based on an arduino-mega, placed on the top of the hexapod to manage the six legs in a very easy and efficient manner, and a camera with some sensors used for the robot walking, obstacle avoidance and object finding/tracking. An efficient inverse kinematics engine should be developed to help the robot walk in different ways with obstacle avoidance at variable speeds.