2022 IFToMM China International Conference on Mechanism and Machine Science & Engineering (IFToMM CCMMS 2022) was held at Yantai on Jul. 30 to Aug. 01. Dr. Zhijun Chen, a Research Assistant from The Institute of Design and Control Engineering for Heavy Equipment at School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University made an oral presentation entitled “Fault-tolerant Walking and Turning Gait Planning for Quadruped Robots with One Locked Leg on Rough Terrains”, and won the “Qixian” Best Paper Award.

Dr. Zhijun Chen (Second from left)

Legged robots can replace humans to execute rescue and detection tasks in harsh environments, such as disasters and planetary explorations. However, robot joints may fail in such environments and it is nearly impossible to carry out an on-site repair. To improve the reliability and prolong the service life of the robots in such situations, this paper proposes a fault-tolerant walking and turning gait planning method for quadruped robots with one locked leg. The gait is designed by taking full advantage of the mobility. The gait is omnidirectional, can adapt to rough terrains and has non-zero static stability margin. This paper is supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China.

IFToMM CCMMS is an academic conference sponsored by IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science) and IFToMM MO China-Beijing every two years, which can be originated back to the first National Conference on Mechanisms held at Huangshan Mountain in 1982. The “Qixian” Best Paper Award was established in memory of the academician Prof. Qixian Zhang in 2011. Among the 172 papers submitted to IFToMM CCMMS 2022, 2 papers were awarded the Best Paper Award, 3 papers awarded the “Qixian” Best Paper Award and 3 papers awarded the “Qixian” Best Presentation Award.