抄録
In this paper, we propose a small amphibian legged robot which travels quickly both on the ground and on water as an observation system in natural environment. A cm-size robot such as insects has a great maneuverability for such environments, i.e., a rough terrain, a lake, and a swamp. For example, a cockroach moves over 30 body-lengths per second and a water strider slides on water by surface tension. These are due to "scaling effect" of insect size that viscosity is more dominant than inertia and the emulation of this mechanism must improve the performance of hardware dramatically. From this viewpoint, we developed a small legged robot which has body length of 4.5 cm and weight of 5.8 g and realized a trot gait with maximum velocity of 25 mm/s (0.53 body-lengths per second) on the ground and wafting based on surface tension on water.
