Insects’ Tripod-Gait and Its Adaptation for Robots

INSECTS’ TRIPOD-GAIT AND ITS ADAPTATION FOR ROBOTS
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Introduction
In the recent years, a researcher in the field of robotics has been attempting to improve
the robotic locomotion especially in flight and walking. Modeling robots walking on insect have
the ability to have efficient and real-time motion with minimal computational supervision which
is termed as a major advantage. The ability of robotics to maintain locomotion with minimal
computational power has greatly been adopted in small autonomous hexapod robotics because
they contain their own computational targets. According to a recent research conducted it has
been confirmed that robotics gaits which are made based on biological schemes show great
responses to the gait trepidations which are caused by the environment or surrounding which
includes holes and objects in the robots way. Insects have been related to humankind by various
aspect which is either beneficial or harmful. Insects are termed as beneficial biological control
agents. They help in pollination as well as the production of honey which has some health
benefits to the human beings. On the other hand, the insect is termed as a pest which can destroy
agricultural products causing a lot of loses to the farmers. The nature of their lifestyle has helped
human being for the understanding of mechanical robots simply because of their tripod gait
walking mechanism. The world would have different if the insect were not present despite their
harmful effects as a pest. Insect inhabits various means of locomotion which can be aerial
locomotion in which they can fly and terrestrial locomotion. Their six-legged body structure
enables them to adopt this locomotion mechanism (Chen, Jin & Chen, 2017, p.1401). Been such
stable with their six-legged body structure and having an easy way to walk many researchers in
the world of robots have adopted their walking style as an appropriate model for robots. Just like
an insect, many other hexapod species have to need able to adopt this tripod-walking gait.

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Tripod-Walking Gait
The physical and the sensory anatomy of the legs play a major role in the gait. Insects
like the cockroaches have a different tripod stance which triggers the original appendage
assembly for the tripod gait. The entire appendages are covered by sensory hair which assists
them in detecting movement in their environment. Internally the appendage is made of
chordotonal organs and muscle receptor which are found in between the limbs and the joints and
they appear as a cluster of sensible which acts as mechanoreceptors (Revzen et al., 2013, p.179).
The physical anatomy and external and internal sense organs of the cockroaches' leg (adapted
from Chen et al., 2012)
During the tripod gait, one side of the three pairs of legs move at the same time and the
other three remains at an immobile state. This when compared to wheeled or tracked movement
in robots that have legs because they operate irregularly. They can change different stages so that

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they can compensate for the irregular terrains. Robots with legs and methods of detection and
correction of events are highly recommended in cases where the risk of slippage is highly
expected. This is because when one leg slips it can affect the entire robot locomotion and hence
it requires some correction in the whole gait. There are two approaches which are highly
recommended in the design of an effective hexapod robot propulsion (Nolfi et al., 2016, p.2035).
The first approach is built on the belief that no existing knowledge exists on terrain that the robot
travels and it highly depends on a reliable design in the gait with negligible sensing. For this
approach to be successful the robot should have the capacity to endure tripping and slippage
without amendment and it also depends purely on the gait pattern (Grzelczyk, Stanczyk &
Awrejcewicz, 2017, p.1740010). This approach makes the robot more susceptible to risky
environments which include steep and slippery terrains. The second techniques of designing
robots involve equipping them with sensors and thus allowing them to familiarize with their
surroundings. The footfalls need to be estimated to give maximum efficiency with reduced errors
and maximum stability. A hexapod insect tends to use tripod gait when it is waling at a rapid
speed (Zhu et al., 2017, p.125). Hexapod insects use ripple gait at a moderate speed and wave
gait at low speed. Among the three gait, tripod gait is the most recommended which is adopted
by hexapod robots as a result of its fast speed and stability. This is because with three legs at the
ground all the time tripod gait has high stability (Dev, 2017). If an insect with six legs losses a
leg it is still capable of successfully navigating through difficult terrain. In some stage of an
insect life cycle, it has to demonstrate this walking mechanism.