The Energetic Effect of a Flexible Spine in Quadrupedal Robots
نویسندگان
چکیده
In nature, quadrupeds make significant use of their flexible spine to achieve energetically economical locomotion. We hypothesize that a flexible spine will also be energetically beneficial for robotic quadrupeds. To test this hypothesis, we compare the energetically optimal motion of a model of a rigid spine quadruped to a model with an articulated spine. We look at a variety of common quadrupedal gaits and find that the articulated model experiences significant energy savings over the rigid model at high speeds. The energetic savings are particularly pronounced for galloping.
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