The MIT Cheetah, an Electrically-Powered Quadrupedal Robot for High-speed Running

Abstract

Quadrupedalism, pervasive in mammals, is a promising mode of locomotion for robotics applications. Recently, the quadrupedal robots have demonstrated remarkable performances. Boston Dynamics demonstrated robust gait control implemented in BigDog [1], and fast locomotion in Cheetah Utilizing the wide stance of the quadrupedal morphology, StarlETH [3] and HyQ [4] also showed robust walking in rough terrains. These achievements suggested that quadrupedal robots could be a widely used for future robotic applications such as service, disaster response, surveillance, and search-and-rescue operations.