Legged robots are highly attractive forudmilitary purposes such as carrying heavy loads on unevenudterrain for long durations because of the higher mobilityudthey give on rough terrain compared to wheeledudvehicles/robots. Existing state-of-the-art quadruped robotsuddeveloped by Boston Dynamics such as LittleDog andudBigDog do not have flexible bodies. It can be easily seen thatudthe agility of quadruped animals such as dogs, cats, and deerudetc. depend to a large extent on their ability to flex theirudbodies. However, simulation study on step climbing in 3Dudterrain quadruped robot locomotion with flexible body hasudnot been reported in literature. This paper aims to study theudeffect of body flexibility on stability and energy efficiency inudwalking mode, trot mode and running (bounding) mode onudstep climbing.
展开▼
