Reactive posture behaviors for stable legged locomotion over steep inclines and large obstacles

Multi-legged walking robots often make use of sophisticated control architectures to play their strengths in rough and unknown environments. The adaptability of these robots is an essential skill to achieve the maneuverability and autonomy needed in their application fields. In this work we present a reactive control approach for the hexapod LAURONV, which enables it to overcome large obstacles and steep slopes without any knowledge about the environment. A key to this success can also be seen in the increased kinematic adaptability due to the fourth rotational joint in the bio-inspired leg kinematics. An extended experimental evaluation shows that the reactive posture behaviors are able to create an effective and efficient locomotion in challenging environments.