Design insight into steady–state locomotion requires careful analysis of the dynamics within and transitions among the combinatorially many possible contact conditions that a legged robot will experience. To that end the self–manipulation formalism, originally intended to aid in the analysis of dynamical transitions, leans on the well established manipulation literature to systematically popula...

The theories of aero- and hydrodynamics predict animal movement and device design in air and water through the computation of lift, drag, and thrust forces. Although models of terrestrial legged locomotion have focused on interactions with solid ground, many animals move on substrates that flow in response to intrusion. However, locomotor-ground interaction models on such flowable ground are of...

The motion planning problems encountered in manipulation and legged locomotion have a distinctive multi-modal structure, where the space of feasible configurations consists of overlapping submanifolds of non-uniform dimensionality. These spaces do not possess expansiveness, a property that characterizes whether planning queries can be solved with traditional sample-based planners. We present a ...

Legged robots allow the locomotion on terrains inaccessible to other type of vehicles because they do not need a continuous support surface. Different strategies have been adopted for the optimization of these systems, during their design and construction phases, and during their operation. Among the different optimization criteria followed by different authors, it is possible to find issues re...

Legged locomotion provides robots with the capability of adapting to different terrain conditions. General complex terrain traversal methodologies solely rely on proprioception which readily leads to instability under dynamical situations. Biological legged locomotion utilizes somatosensory feedback to sense the real-time interaction of the feet with ground to enhance stability. Nevertheless, l...

Stable and robust autonomous dynamic locomotion is demonstrated experimentally in a four and a six-legged robot. The Scout II quadruped runs on flat ground in a bounding gait, and was motivated by an effort to understand the minimal mechanical design and control complexity for dynamically stable locomotion. The RHex 0 hexapod runs dynamically in a tripod gait over flat and badly broken terrain....

The speed and maneuverability at which legged animals can travel through rough and cluttered landscapes has provided inspiration for the pursuit of legged robots with similar capabilities. Researchers have developed reduced-order models of legged locomotion and have begun investigating complementary control strategies based on observed biological control schemes. This study examines a novel con...

There is a growing trend of social robots to move into the human environment. This research is set up to find the trends within social robotic designs. A sample of social robotic designs is drawn to investigate on whether there are more legged social robots than social robots with wheeled. In addition we investigate whether social robots use legs or wheels for locomotion, and which continent pr...

Wheeled and tracked vehicles are mainly suitable for relatively flat terrain. Legged vehicles, on the other hand, have the potential to handle a wide variety of terrain. This article presents a new locomotion concept, adapted to both flat and complex rough terrain by combining the advantages of wheeled and legged vehicels. MATE-1 is a bipedal robot equipped with two special grippers which provi...

This paper presents the kinematic study of periodic gaits for multi-legged locomotion systems. The main purpose is to determine the kinematic characteristics and the system performance during walking. For that objective the prescribed motion of the robot is completely characterized in terms of several locomotion variables such as gait, duty factor, body height, step length, stroke pitch, maximu...