Dead Reckoning Navigation For Walking Robots

Abstract

Autonomous and teleoperated mobile robots require an accurate knowledge of their spatial location in order to accomplish many tasks. Many mobile robots make use of dead reckoning navigation because of its simplicity, low cost, and robustness. Although dead reckoning navigation was used for centuries on ships and wheeled vehicles, the application to a walking machine is novel. Since walking machines differ greatly from ships and wheeled vehicles, a new approach to dead reckoning was developed to solve this problem. This paper discusses the problem, a solution, preliminary test results, and future goals for dead reckoning navigation. Experiments were done with the CMU Ambler, an autonomous, six-legged walking robot, but the results are general and apply to any statically stable walking robot. The current results show a systematic bias of two percent of body advance in the direction of travel. Although the cause of this bias is unknown, it is corrected in the position estimation routines.