As hinted in my earlier video I’ve been working towards some higher speed gaits with the quad A1. To accomplish that, I had to restructure the gait sequencing logic to permit changing cycle times and allow flight phases.

For now, I’ve tentatively broken down the trot gait into 5 regimes, based on how fast the machine is moving:

1. At the slowest speeds, the flight legs swing through a step in the configured maximum flight time. The interval between flight times is fixed at a configured maximum. Here the speed is determined by how far the flight legs move.
2. Once the flight legs are moving through their maximum allowed distance, then the amount of time spent with both legs on the ground is reduced in order to increase speed.
3. At the point when both legs are not on the ground at the same time, then there begins to be a flight phase. Increasing the length of the flight phase increases the speed.
4. When the flight phase reaches a configured maximum, then the swing time is decreased until it reaches a configured minimum.
5. When the swing time is at a configured minimum, the flight time is at a configured maximum, and the legs are moving through their maximum range, then the machine is moving at its maximum speed.

Depending upon the current commanded rotation rate and translation velocity, the distance available for the legs to travel through may change. This uses the same mechanism from the step selection technique to determine the maximum distance at each update cycle, then selects which of the above regimes is active based on the commanded speed.

For a given maximum distance the legs can move through, that results in key gait parameters changing with speed as in the plot below:

Next up I’ll cover the heuristics used to implement any given set of gait parameters in a stable manner.