Stable reflex-based walking of forelimbs of a bio-inspired quadruped robot-modeled cheetah

Abstract

In contrast to the high movement adaptability of quadruped animals in many environmental conditions, it is hard for conventional quadruped robots to operate in complex environment conditions. We investigate the adaptability of animals’ musculo-skeletal systems, by building a bio-inspired quadruped robot named ”Pneupard” which duplicates a feline musculo-skeletal system. In this study, we built Pneupard’s forelimb which has 14 active muscles, 4 passive muscles and 8 degrees of freedom (DOF). We propose sole reflex-based control and verify its effectiveness by conducting walking experiments, in which the robot performed stable walking with a two-dimensional restriction.This work was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(23220004) from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ROBIO.2013.673973