Development of a Small Pneumatic Quadruped Robot Having Hip Joints Turned in the Roll Direction

Abstract

We developed a small pneumatic quadruped robot. The robot has hip joints turned in the roll direction. The robot doesn't limit range of motion and increases a stride without changing the width of the shoulders. We hoped that the robot run faster with bounding gaits when compared with hip joints not turned in the roll direction. Experiments were run in hardware on treadmill with fast trotting gaits and short bounding gaits. The robot reached a running trot with a maximum speed 6.5 [km/h] when hip joints turned and 7.0 [km/h] when hip joints not turned. In this paper, the robot didn't run with bounding gaits at enough time to compare a speed when hip joints turned or not.