Study of Steady-State Periodic Motions of Crawling Robot Modules under External Disturbances

The development and design of a multi-module crawling robot requires an elaboration of each aspect of its motion in the implementation of various tasks, including holding the position of such a robot under a driving force. This problem has been solved for a three-module crawling robot, one of the end supports of which was fixed on the surface, and the other was affected by the harmonic external force changing according to the meander law. For this purpose, a module control system based on the CTC controller has been proposed. Numerical simulation has been used to study the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of robot module vibrations depending on the ratio of the amplitudes of the vertical and horizontal components of the force and the phase mismatch between them. It is found that when the external force vertical and horizontal amplitudes are equal, the module angles fluctuate relative to the set values, and when there is a certain ratio between the amplitudes, a static error appears which increases as the specified ratio moves away from 1.

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