The paper presents construction and control system of the climbing robot Safari designed at the Poznan University of Technology for inspection of high building walls, executed in order to evaluate their technical condition. Because such tasks are uncomfortable and very dangerous for humans, this mobile machine gives a possibility to observe and examine the state of the surface on which it is moving. The robot is a construction developed for walking on flat but uneven vertical and horizontal surfaces. Its on-board equipment provides ability to remotely examine and record images reflecting the robot’s surroundings. At the beginning of the paper, several concepts of existing climbing robots (four-legged, six-legged, sliding platform) are outlined. Next, the mechanical system of the Safari robot is presented with special emphasis on its kinematic equations and description of movement stages. Then, the on-board manipulator as well as the sensor and control systems are described.

This paper proposes an analysis of the effect of vertical position of the pivot point of the inverted pendulum during humanoid walking. We introduce a new feature of the inverted pendulum by taking a pivot point under the ground level allowing a natural trajectory for the center of pressure (CoP), like in human walking. The influence of the vertical position of the pivot point on energy consumption is analyzed here. The evaluation of a 3D Walking gait is based on the energy consumption. A sthenic criterion is used to depict this evaluation. A consequent reduction of joint torques is shown with a pivot point under the ground.

Adaptive locomotion over difficult or irregular terrain is considered as a superiority feature of walking robots over wheeled or tracked machines. However, safe foot positioning, body posture and stability, correct leg trajectory, and efficient path planning are a necessity for legged robots to overcome a variety of possible terrains and obstacles.Without these properties, anywalking machine becomes useless. Energy consumption is one of the major problems for robots with a large number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF). When considering a path plan ormovement parameters such as speed, step length or step height, it is important to choose the most suitable variables to sustain long battery life and to reach the objective or complete the task successfully.We change the settings of a hexapod robot leg trajectory for overcoming small terrain irregularities by optimizing consumed energy and leg trajectory during each leg transfer. The trajectory settings are implemented as a part of hexapod robot simulation model and tested through series of experiments with various terrains of differing complexity and obstacles of various sizes. Our results show that the proposed energy-efficient trajectory transformation is an effective method for minimizing energy consumption and improving overall performance of a walking robot.