No legged walking robot yet approaches the high reliability and the low power usage of a walking person, even on flat ground. Here we describe a robot which makes small progress towards that goal. Ranger is a knee-less 4-legged ‘bipedal’ robot which is energetically and computationally autonomous, except for radio controled steering. It has a total cost of transport [TCOT ≡ P/mgv] of 0.19, less...

Multi-legged robots display significant advantages with respect to wheeled ones for walking over rough terrain because they do not need continuous contact with the ground. In Multi-legged robots, hexapod robots, mechanical vehicles that walk on six legs, have attracted considerable attention in recent decades. There are several benefits for hexapods rover. (a) Hexapod robot is easy to maintain ...

An inspiration for developing a bipedal walking system is the ability to navigate rough terrain with discrete footholds like stepping stones. In this paper, we present a novel methodology to overcome the problem of dynamic walking over stepping stones with significant random changes to step length and step height at each step. Using a 2-step gait optimization, we not only consider the desired l...

In this paper the design of a biped robot actuated with Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) springs with minimum degrees of freedom is presented. SMA springs are a class of smart materials that are known for their high power to mass and volume ratios. It was shown that utilizing spring type of SMAs have many advantages as large deformation, smooth motion, silent and clean movement compared to ordinary typ...