Multi-legged robots deployed in complex missions are susceptible to physical damage in their legs, impairing task performance and potentially compromising mission success. This letter presents a rapid, training-free damage recovery algorithm for legged robots subject to partial or complete loss of functional legs. The proposed method first stabilizes locomotion by generating a new gait sequence and subsequently optimally reconfigures leg gaits via a developed differential evolution algorithm to maximize forward progression while minimizing body rotation and lateral drift. The algorithm successfully restores locomotion in a 24-degree-of-freedom hexapod within one hour, demonstrating both high efficiency and robustness to structural damage.
@article{arxiv.2506.19968,
title = {Evolutionary Gait Reconfiguration in Damaged Legged Robots},
author = {Sahand Farghdani and Robin Chhabra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.19968},
year = {2025}
}