Metachronal Wave Gait Generation for Hexapod Robots

The metachronal wave is a gait used by most terrestrial arthropods. Each leg only lifts when the leg behind it is on the ground in position to support the animal’s weight. The wave starts from the back as the hind leg lifts and is transferred forward as each leg in turn lifts. At its fastest, it is the tripod gait. In its slowest smooth movement form, only one leg at a time is lifted on each side. This provides increased stability and decreased energy expenditure. Development of stable, smoothly moving metachronal waves for legged robots can provide these same advantages. In this paper we use the Cyclic Genetic Algorithms with an adjustable speed for the robot’s legs to produce the desired metachronal wave.