Immersive Operation System for Hexapod Robot with Follow-the-Contact-Point Gait Control

This study develops an immersive operation system for a hexapod robot equipped with a stereo camera, which allows the operator wearing head-mounted display (HMD) to control the robot in virtual reality (VR). The hexapod robot can be made to walk on uneven terrain with follow-the-contact-point gait control only when the contact points of the foremost legs are indicated by the operator. The environment surrounding the robot is constructed in VR based on the image captured by the stereo camera, and the operator indicates the contact points of the foremost legs through VR controllers. The proposed immersive operation system is compared with the conventional operation system in which the operator inputs the ground contact point with a mouse on 2D image. Experimental results establish that the proposed immersive operation system is more effective in controlling the movement of the robot across uneven terrain because it enables the operator to easily understand the unevenness and distance.