Modeling and simulation of Spider's Walking

Currently robot designers are ever more inspired by nature to develop and design legged robots to mimic the walking style of insects over uneven and rough surfaces. In this work, walking behavior and method of a kind of spider Araneus diadematus are investigated. Image processing techniques are used to obtain kinematic parameters of the spider's legs. The positions of defi ned points on the spider's legs were recorded in terms of time. After extracting the necessary data, a linkage mechanism of the legs was designed. By using the position of defi ned points on spider's legs as input to our model and implementation of trigonometric relations, parameters such as angle, angular velocity, and angular acceleration of each link were obtained. Then, a model of linkage mechanism for the spider's legs in SIMULINK environment of MATLAB was created. By allocating mechanical properties of linkages such as mass and moment of inertia to the model, quantities of torque in joints, which were needed for producing the traversed path of spider's legs, were obtained. These quantities can be used for selection and control of actuators in the novel robotic system in order to mimic the spider's walking style.