Films like Shrek, Madagascar, The Chronicles of Narnia and Charlotte’s web all have something in common: realistic quadruped animations. While the animation of animals has been popular for a long time, the technical challenges associated with creating highly realistic, computer generated creatures have been receiving increasing attention recently. The entertainment, education and medical indust...

Ohio State (OSU) and Stanford Universities are cooperating to understand quadruped galloping through the design of a self-contained, biomimetic, galloping robot. The leg for this quadruped was first designed at Ohio State University (OSU). A second-generation leg, with the same functional geometry, has been designed and tested at Stanford University. The objective of these tests was to determin...

There is so far no quadruped robot that exhibits locomotion performance matching to that shown by animals every day. Both differences in general design concepts, in available materials and actuation mechanisms as well as a lack of understanding on the control of the robots’ actuators contribute to the current performance gap between robotic platforms and their biological counterparts. While for...

The central pattern generator (CPG) has been found to be a real, existing neuron controller for the locomotion control of animals and it has been used on bio‐inspired robots widely in recent years. However, research on the adaptability of CPG‐based locomotion control methods is still a challenge. In particular, the performance of the CPG method on qua...

The COG trajectory planning method is the primary concern in the gait planning for quadruped robot, especially when the quadruped robot travelling on rough terrain. In this paper, we focus on the scenario where the quadruped robot walking on the rough terrain with the static walking gait. We present a smooth COG trajectory generator that the COG smooth trajectory characterized by continuous vel...

This paper is concerned with locomotion systems modelling and control; in particular the locomotion of bio-mimetically inspired quadruped robots. Using observations and experimentations, we propose a virtual model of quadruped with no dorsal vertebrae, such as the case in the majority of legged mobile robots. This condition applies to the terrestrial tortoise and makes it a good example for bio...

For a quadruped robot with 12 active joints driven by linear hydraulic actuators, some important parameters, such as the oil flow of the hydraulic system and the needed maximum output force of each actuator, are hard to calculate precisely with kinematics and dynamics equations. The oil flow is mainly determined by the walking speed of the quadruped robot, but also influenced by the stride freq...

[Purpose] The objective of this study was to compare the effects of flexi-bar training and general lumbar stabilization training on muscle activity and fatigue. [Methods] Twenty normal persons participated in this study. After warm up and a Maximum Voluntary Isomeric Contraction (MVIC) test, participants performed bridging exercise, quadruped lumbar stabilization exercise on quadruped and curl-...

We compare the effects of linear and piecewise linear compliant spines on locomotion performance of quadruped robots in terms of energy efficiency and locomotion speed through a set of simulations and experiments. We first present a simple locomotion system that behaviorally resembles a bounding quadruped with flexible spine. Then, we show that robots with linear compliant spines have higher lo...