Thanks to their sprawled posture and multi-legged support, stability is not as hard to achieve for hexapedal robots as it is for bipeds and quadrupeds. A key engineering challenge with hexapods has been to produce insect-like agility and maneuverability, of which steering is an essential part. However, the mechanisms of multi-legged steering are not always clear, especially for robots with underactuated legs. Here we propose a formal definition of steering, and show why steering is difficult for robots with 6 or more underactuated legs. We show that for many of these robots, steering is impossible without slipping, and present experimental results which demonstrate the importance of allowing for slipping to occur intentionally when optimizing steering ability. Our results suggest that a non-holonomic multi-legged slipping model might be more appropriate than dynamic models for representing such robots, and that conventional non-slip contact models might miss significant parts of the performance envelope.

中文翻译：

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低DoF六脚机器人可进行多腿转向和打滑。

得益于它们四肢不动的姿势和多腿支撑，六足机器人的稳定性不如两足动物和四足动物难于实现。六足动物面临的主要工程挑战是产生类似昆虫的敏捷性和可操纵性，其中操纵是必不可少的部分。但是，多腿转向的机制并不总是很清楚，特别是对于腿部驱动不足的机器人。在这里，我们提出了转向的正式定义，并说明了为什么对于腿部不足6个或更多的机器人，转向困难。我们表明，对于许多此类机器人，如果不打滑就不可能进行转向，并且目前的实验结果证明了在优化转向能力时允许故意打滑的重要性。