Design of statically stable walking robot: A review

The superior mobility characteristics of legged animals compared to those of wheeled or tracked vehicles for off-road locomotion motivated the development of artificial walking machines. The sustained worldwide efforts for the last few decades resulted in a large number of legged robots with different levels of sophistication. Here, various design approaches made so far to realize artificial legged locomotion are discussed. Mainly, different vehicle configurations as well as leg mechanisms which are already explored by researchers are reviewed in brief. The author hopes that this will serve as a brief account of previous research efforts and help future walking robot designers to develop more sophisticated machines. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.