Abstract: To solve the problem of autonomous behavior control for a micro wall-climbing robot when its suction foot fails to generate enough vacuum pressure to hold itself on an unsmoothed surface, according to the structure design and the gaits of the robot, a gait control method to choose a location to put the suction foot down based on initiative exploration is proposed. Firstly, three motion modes of the micro wall-climbing robot are analyzed, as well as its basic gaits of the linear motion and the turning motion. Then, after defining a state vector for the robot, a finite state machine model and a state transition map of the suction foot are introduced. In addition, the priority order of the state transfer function is defined according to the “handy” principle. With the above-mentioned research, the gait control method of the robot in an unknown environment based on initiative exploration is presented. Finally, the method is verified through simulations in artificial environments and experiments in actual aircraft external surface environment. The results show that the method is feasible and very effective for improving the performance of the robot autonomous control.

Key words: Gait control, Initiative exploration, Wall-climbing robot