Comparing the effect of different spine and leg designs for a small bounding quadruped robot

Abstract

We present Lynx-robot, a quadruped, modular, compliant machine. It alternately features a directly actuated, single-joint spine design, or an actively supported, passive compliant, multi-joint spine configuration. Both spine configurations bend in the sagittal plane. This study aims at characterizing these two, largely different spine concepts, for a bounding gait of a robot with a three segmented, pantograph leg design. An earlier, similar-sized, bounding, quadruped robot named Bobcat with a two-segment leg design and a directly actuated, single-joint spine design serves as a comparison robot, to study and compare the effect of the leg design on speed, while keeping the spine design fixed. Both proposed spine designs (single rotatory and active and multi-joint compliant) reach moderate, self-stable speeds.