While the current progress in actuation schemes, sensor setups, and mechanical design allows the development of increasingly performing legged robots, motion planing and control of such systems still pose challenging problems. Our group contributes to the ongoing research by focusing on the calibration, state estimation, and perception of legged platforms. Especially in rough and unstructured t...

Much of what we know about the flexibility of the locomotor networks in vertebrates is derived from studies examining the adaptation of limb movements during stepping in various conditions. However, the body movements play important roles during locomotion: they produce the thrust during undulatory locomotion and they help to increase the stride length during legged locomotion. In this chapter,...

Legged locomotion through natural environments is very complex and variable. For example, leg kinematics may differ strongly between species, but even within the same species it is adaptive and context-dependent. Inter-species differences in locomotion are often difficult to interpret, because both morphological and ecological differences among species may be strong and, as a consequence, confo...

We extend a smooth dynamical systems averaging technique to a class of hybrid systems with a limit cycle that is particularly relevant to the synthesis of stable legged gaits. After introducing a definition of hybrid averageability sufficient to recover the classical result, we provide a simple illustration of its applicability to legged locomotion and conclude with some rather more speculative...

In this paper a model is presented which describes an octopusinspired robot capable of two kinds of locomotion: crawling and bipedal walking. Focus will be placed on the latter type of locomotion to demonstrate, through model simulations and experimental trials, that the robot’s speed increases by about 3 times compared to crawling. This finding is coherent with the performances of the biologic...

Robotic spacecraft have helped expand our reach for many planetary exploration missions. Most ground mobile robots use wheeled or modified platforms. Although extraordinarily successful at completing intended mission goals, because of the limitations locomotion, they been largely limited to benign, solid terrain and avoided extreme with loose soil/sand large rocks. Unfortunately, such challengi...

Legged off-road vehicles exhibit better mobility while moving on rough terrain. Development of legged mechanisms represents a challenging problem and has attracted significant attention from both artists and engineers.The Theo Jansen mechanism is gaining widespread popularity among the legged robotics community due to its scalable design, energy, efficiency, low payload-to-machine-load ratio, b...

It is well known that legged locomotion is more efficient,speedy, and versatile than the one by track and wheeled vehicles when it operates in a rough terrain or in unconstructed environment. The potential advantages of legged locomotion can be indicated such as better mobility, obstacles overcoming ability, active suspension, energy efficiency, and achievable speed (Song & Waldron, 1989). Legg...

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-,...

Abstract Legged locomotion of robots can be greatly improved by bioinspired tribological structures and applying the principles computational morphology to achieve fast energy-efficient walking. In a previous research, we mounted shark skin on belly hexapod robot show that passive anisotropic friction properties this structure enhance efficiency, resulting in stronger grip varying walking surfa...