Abstract
In this paper, we describe the development of the quadruped robot "TaKen" for achieving high speed running. TaKen has the minimalistic body and compliance to the spine and the knee. We use McKibben pneumatic artifical muscles as TaKen's actuators, having high power-to-weight ratio and mechanical compliance, also avoiding problems with overheating. We conducted a preliminary experiment, measuring the leg swing range without amplitude reduction. Then we conducted running experiment by using simple open-loop controller, and compared speed and Froude number of TaKen to other robots.
