Editorial: Mechanics of Legged Robots: From Bio-Inspiration to Novel Legged Machines

Legged Robot 16 . Legged Robots

In this chapter, we introduce legged robots. After introducing the history of legged robot research in Sect. 16.1, we start to discuss hopping robots and analyze a simple passive walker as a typical cycling walking robot in Sect. 16.2; the Poincaré map is one of the most important tools to analyze its dynamics and stability. In Sect. 16.3, the dynamics and control of general biped robots are di...

Toward Mission Capable Legged Robots through Biological Inspiration

Insects provide good models for the design and control of mission capable legged robots. We are using intelligent biological inspiration to extract the features important for locomotion from insect neuromechanical designs and implement them into legged robots. Each new model in our series of robots represents an advance in agility, strength, or energy efficiency, which are all important for per...

Bio-inspired Legged Locomotion

Mechanics and Simulation of Six-Legged Walking Robots

Legged locomotion is used by biological systems since millions of years, but wheeled locomotion vehicles are so familiar in our modern life, that people have developed a sort of dependence on this form of locomotion and transportation. However, wheeled vehicles require paved surfaces, which are obtained through a suitable modification of the natural environment. Thus, walking machines are more ...

Mechanics of six-legged runners.

Six-legged pedestrians, cockroaches, use a running gait during locomotion. The gait was defined by measuring ground reaction forces and mechanical energy fluctuations of the center of mass in Blaberus discoidalis (Serville) as they travelled over a miniature force platform. These six-legged animals produce horizontal and vertical ground-reaction patterns of force similar to those found in two-,...