Energy Consumption of a Hexspider Robot-o as Function of Footwear and Underground: Experimental Investigations

Abstract

In this paper, the previously designed and implemented spiderino robot-o, or a robot used to act in a swarm for educational purposes, is investigated regarding his energy-consuming properties. An experimental setup consists of a platform inside which the spiderino robot-o can freely move with a fixed random movement program. Furthermore, the robot-o feet were equipped with footwear made of materials with different friction coefficients, non-equipped or plastics, equipped with cork, equipped with rubber, and the underground was chosen to be stone, wood, plastics, and with regard to floor inclination for all variants flat and for the stone variant also inclined by 10%. The results show a characteristic curve in energy consumption according to a slightly different behaviour concerning the material combinations of footwear and floor, which adapts energy consumption physically due to the specific footwear-underground combination.