On the design of a four-legged walking machine

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a four-legged walking machine with a versatile leg construction. It offers the possibilty to investigate reptile-and mammal-like walking with only one mechanical realization. A flexible spinal will support walking with better stability. For the control of the machine, a hierarchical organized control hardware will be used, which has been very successful on our ohter walking machines.

Effect of flexible spine on stability of a passive quadruped robot: Experimental results

“…Flexibility in spine accommodates for energy absorption when the legs hop forward and the energy is fed back to the robot to lift the hands. Some research has been also done on the quadruped robots considering the flexible spine, but in some of them [8,9,10], the point of view is not completely concentrated on the effect of the spine flexibility in stability and adaptability. In addition, the others are only limited to simulation results [11] and none of them are completely passive.…”

Design and experimental study of a compliant feet quadruped robot with closed-chain mechanism legs

“…These two robots had good ability to crawl over rough obstacle. Inspired by the animal's leg locomotion, the linear actuation was used to drive each joint of the open-chain mechanism legs in some robot, such as the BISAM [4,5], BigDog [6], and HyQ [7,8]. Each joint of the BISAM was driven by the motor with a linear screw system and the driving system of the BigDog and HyQ's were linear hydraulic system.…”