Adaptive Walking on Uphill Sandy Surface Based on Organic Computing and Somatosensory Feedback

Walking on uphill sandy surface is a challenging task and is considered one of the most difficult terrains that a walking robot can face. This paper will shed light on our applied decentralized approach to enable a hexapod robot to walk on uphill sandy surface effectively. In this paper we will show that the combination between our previously introduced approaches and our new strategy enables the hexapod robot to cope with this type of terrain. The suggested strategy is based on the synchronization between the moved legs that are touching the ground. This synchronization provides the robot's legs with the sufficient driving force during uphill walking. The novelty of our approach is the only evaluation of the local current consumption and angular position of each leg's joint as somatosensory feedback. It is based on an organic computing architecture and was tested on a low-cost version of the OSCAR walking robot.