Patent ID: 7826927

Claim:
A legged mobile robot, which moves with repeated lifting off and landing on a floor of each of a plurality of legs extending from a body, the legged mobile robot comprising: one or more detection processors for detecting a position or location of objects around the robot; a contact determination processor for determining a presence or absence of a predicted contact position, at which the robot has a possibility to come into contact with an object in its desired path, based on the position or location of the object measured by the one or more detection processors; a distance calculation processor for calculating a distance from the robot to the predicted contact position when the contact determination processor determines the presence of the predicted contact position between the robot and the object; an operation control processor for controlling operation of the robot such that when the distance calculated by the distance calculation processor is less than a first threshold, a moving speed is reduced to a first speed by controlling at least one of a length of stride and a landing cycle, and when the calculated distance is less than an (i+1)-th threshold lower than an i-th threshold (where i=1, 2, . . . ), the moving speed is reduced from an i-th speed to an (i+1)-th speed; and a malfunction determination processor for determining a presence or absence of a detection malfunction of any detection functions of the one or more detection processors, wherein the operation control processor of the robot controls the operation of the robot such that a rate of change in the at least one of the length of stride and the landing cycle of the robot falls within a tolerable range that is set to allow sufficient deceleration while maintaining stability of the robot, and wherein when the malfunction determination processor determines that there is a detection malfunction of any of the detection functions of the one or more detection processors, the operation control processor sets the i-th speed lower than in a case when the malfunction determination processor determines that the detection function of the corresponding detection processor is normal.