Scientists have, for the first time, successfully developed a four-legged robot that can spontaneously change its gait when speed is varied.
The advance may lead to a wide range of applications such as adaptive legged robots working in disaster areas, user-friendly legged entertainment robots and automatic motion-creation algorithms for computer graphics animation.
Until now, the manner in which changing speeds cause quadrupeds to change their gaits — walking, trotting and galloping — was poorly understood.
Researchers from the Tohoku University in Japan demonstrated the reproduction of the quadruped gait transition phenomena. They achieved this via a decentralised control scheme, using a local rule in which a leg continues to support the body while sensing weight on the corresponding leg.
