Crawling robots are advantageous in overcoming obstacles. These robots have characteristics such as light weight and outstanding mobility. In case of large robots, they have difficulties passing narrow gaps or entering the cave. In this paper, we propose a milli-scale hexapedal robot using 4-bar linkages. Two conditions are necessary to enable efficient walking. In short, the trajectory of the foot must be elliptical, and the lowest point of the foot should be the same. These conditions are satisfied with a novel leg design. The robot has a pair of three legs and the legs are coupled to operate simultaneously. Each set of the legs are installed to robot’s both sides and the legs satisfy the equal lowest foot point and elliptical trajectory. As a result, this hexapedal robot can crawl with 0.56m/s speed.

This paper presents mechanical design and control of a bio-inspired legged robot. To achieve a fast legged running mechanism, a novel linkage leg structure is designed based on hind legs of domestic cats. The skeletomuscular system and parallel leg movement of a cat are analyzed and applied to determine the link parameters. The hierarchical control architecture is designed according to the biological data to generate and modulate desired gaits. The effectiveness of the leg mechanism design and control is verified experimentally. The legged robot runs at a speed of 46 km/h, which is comparatively higher speed than other existing legged robots.

Milli-scale crawling robots have been widely studied due to their maneuverability in confined spaces. For successful crawling, the crawling robots basically required to fulfill alternating gait with elliptical foot trajectory. The alternating gait with elliptical foot trajectory normally generates both forward and upward motion. The upward motion makes the aerial phase and during the aerial phase, the forward motion enables the crawling robots to proceed. This simultaneous forward and upward motion finally results in fast crawling speed. In this paper, we propose a novel alternating mechanism to make a crab-inspired eight-legged crawling robot. The key design strategy is an alternating mechanism based on double four-bar linkages. Crab-like robots normally employs gear-chain drive to make the opposite phase between neighboring legs. To use the gear-chain drive to this milli-scale robot system, however, is not easy because of heavy weight and mechanism complexity. To solve the issue, the double-four bar linkages has been invented to generate the oaring motion for transmitting the equal motion in the opposite phase. Thanks to the proposed mechanism, the robot crawls just like the real crab with the crawling speed of 0.57 m/s.

A small and lightweight crawling robots have been actively studied thanks to their outstanding mobility and maneuverability. Those robots can navigate into more confined spaces that larger robots are unable to reach or enter such as debris and caves. In this paper, we propose a milli-scale hexapedal robot based on planar linkage design. To make this possible, two necessary conditions for successful crawling are satisfied: thrust force from the ground and aerial phase while running. These conditions are achieved through a newly developed leg design. The robot has a pair of legs and each leg has three feet. Those feet alternatively moves based on 1DOF planar linkage. This linkage is installed at each side of the robot and finally the robot shows the alternating gait and aerial phase during running. As a result, the robot runs with the crawling speed of 0.9 m/s.

This paper describes the design concept of a bio-inspired legged underwater and estimating its performance by implementing simulations. Especially the leg structure of an underwater organism, diving beetles, is fully adopted to our designing to employ its efficiency for swimming. To make it possible for the robot to both walk and swim, the transformable kinematic model according to applications of the leg is proposed. To aid in the robot development and estimate swimming performance of the robot in advance, an underwater simulator has been constructed and an approximated model based on the developing robot was set up in the simulation. Furthermore, previous work that we have done, the swimming locomotion produced by a swimming patten generator based on the control parameters, is briefly mentioned in the paper and adopted to the simulation for extensive studies such as path planning and control techniques. Through the results, we established the strategy of leg joints which make the robot swim in the three dimensional space to reach effective controls.