Abstract
In this study, we focus on the question how possible a tripedal animal would walk. To resolve this question, we pursue the 'simplest' mechanism that can perform tripedal walking and develop a tripedal walking robot with fixed kneeless legs and reaction wheel at its center. There have been several, not many though, challenges to realize tripedal walking robot. But in any case, these owe much on elaborated (and artificial) joint mechanisms. In contrast, the tripod walking robot we propose in this study, does not have any coxa joint nor knee joint. The robot has two actuators and a pair of weights so that it can generate torque about the yaw and the pitch axes. We show that, by appropriate choices of oscillatory controls, it is indeed possible to achieve rotation and forwarding locomotion of the tripedal robot. The proposed idea is examined by both numerical simulations and physical experiments.
