LoCoQuad: A Low-Cost Arachnoid Quadruped Robot for Research and\n Education

Abstract

Developing real robotic systems requires a tight integration of mechanics,\nelectronics and software. Most of the times, existing robotic platforms are\neither closed or expensive or both, and in-house solutions are costly to\ndevelop and maintain. Open-source and low-cost designs are essential to\nfacilitate the access to real robotic platforms and enable further progress in\nthe field.\n LoCoQuad is an arachnoid quadruped platform that we designed targeting\nresearch and education in robotics. To meet these two ends, our platform allows\nfor a high degree of flexibility and configurability. Our legged design has the\nlowest hardware cost of the state of the art, in the range of 150-165USD. We\nvalidated the robot platform by running several experiments showing over all\nfunctionalities. All the mechanical and electronic designs and all the software\nhave been made open source and can be found at:\nhttps://github.com/TomBlackroad/LoCoQuad\n