Legged robots are highly attractive for
military purposes such as carrying heavy loads on uneven
terrain for long durations because of the higher mobility
they give on rough terrain compared to wheeled
vehicles/robots. Existing state-of-the-art quadruped robots
developed by Boston Dynamics such as LittleDog and
BigDog do not have flexible bodies. It can be easily seen that
the agility of quadruped animals such as dogs, cats, and deer
etc. depend to a large extent on their ability to flex their
bodies. However, simulation study on step climbing in 3D
terrain quadruped robot locomotion with flexible body has
not been reported in literature. This paper aims to study the
effect of body flexibility on stability and energy efficiency in
walking mode, trot mode and running (bounding) mode on
step climbing
