A Passive Dynamic Walking robot can walk down a gentle slope naturally without any actuator or controller, only using potential energy. This suggests that the principle of walking may exist in this phenomenon. Current researches have confirmed Passive Dynamic Walking (PDW) for biped and quadruped. However, it is also important and interesting to study PDW for more than six legs because it could be a significant approach for the resolution of the principle of walking. In this research, the super multilegged passive dynamic walking robot was analyzed by experiments with " Jenkka-III". And it was confirmed that the 20 legged robot could walk and its gait was changed depending on the degree of freedom of its bodies.

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A passive dynamic walking (PDW) robot can walk down a gentle slope naturally without any actuator or controller. Therefore, it is thought that the principle of walking exists in this. By current researches, PDW was confirmed for two or four. However, it is also important to study PDW for more than 6 legs because there are many creatures for more than 6 legs. In our previous research, a PDW for more than six legs was analyzed by a simulator. As a result, it was confirmed that PDW even for 20 legs could be achieved. Furthermore, its gait could be changed by changing the body structure. In this paper, by experiments with a real walking robot, it is confirmed that six-legged robot can walk and its gait can be changed.

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In this paper, a quadrupedal quasi-passive dynamic walking robot driven by a rocking motion has been investigated. Experimental results show that the robot can walk on the level ground and that a walking speed is related to a period and a phase difference of the rocking motion. Through investigation of a shape of soles, we revealed Duke has a nonholonomic constraint that is comparable to that of a kinematic model of “two-wheeled mobile robot” on its sole. As a result of analyses based on the nonlinear control theory, we conclude that the sole shape contributes to a transition of walking speed accompanying with change of the phase difference.

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We focus on the inter-limb coordination derived by an ingenious trunk for the realization of various locomotion of multi-legs robot. In this paper, we design a bran-new trunk mechanism in which is equipped with an actuator and build 6-legs robots with passive limbs with the trunk. Through walking experiments with the developed robot, we analysis its locomotion. In addition, we focus on the effect of the physical characteristics of the robot. We also analyze the effect of the physical characteristics on the inter-limb coordination.

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In this paper, we focus on how body structures effect on the quadruped walking phenomena. The morphology of the body is one of the factors that living things exhibit multiple and supple locomotion in an unknown environment. Quadruped PDW robots have demonstrated versatile behaviors by changing the body dynamics between fore and hind legs. Then, we build some bodies with multi flexibilities and restoring characteristics, and analyze the role of the body dynamics via some experiments.

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In this paper, quadrupedal quasi-passive dynamic walking robot driven by a rocking motion has been investigated. Experiment shows that the robot can walk on the level ground and also that walking speed changes depending on a frequency of the rocking motion. Moreover, it is revealed that there is an interrelation between walking speed and leg swing motion.

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In this paper, a quadrupedal quasi-passive dynamic walking robot using a rocking motion has been investigated. Experimental results show that this robot can walk on the level ground and that walking speed is related to a phase difference of rocking motion. Through investigation of a shape of soles, we revealed Duke has a nonholonomic constraint that is comparable to that of "two-wheeled robot" on its sole. As a result of analyses based on the nonlinear control theory, we conclude that the sole shape contributes to the transition of walking speed accompanying with change of a phase difference.

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In this paper, we focus on how body structures effect on the quadruped walking phenomena. The morphology of the body is one of the factors that living things exhibit multiple and supple locomotion in an unknown environment. Quadruped PDW robots have demonstrated versatile behaviors by changing the body dynamics between fore and hind legs. Then, we build some bodies with multi flexibilities and restoring characteristics, and analyze the effect of the positions and stiffness of the body joints.

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Insects exhibit surprisingly adaptive locomotion under unstructured environments despite their limited computational resources. Such locomotor patterns are generated via coordination between leg movements. Thus far, numerous studies have been devoted to elucidate this mechanism from biological as well as robotic viewpoint; however, it has not yet clearly understood. To tackle this problem, we employ a unique approach: we reconsider interlimb coordination mechanism of hexapod locomotion from quadruped locomotion. In our previous study, we proposed an unconventional CPG model of quadruped locomotion that fully exploits physical communication between legs via load sensing. Our quadruped robots with this CPG model well reproduce various gait patterns observed in actual quadruped animals. Based on this result, we intend to apply the CPG to the interlimb coordination of hexapod locomotion.

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The purpose of this study is constructing a walk control system for quadruped robots that don’t have same scale and same weight but have similar DoF layouts. This paper describes a concept of our walk control system and its idea. The concept is a unified control system that suits a robot skeleton. A control architecture is hierarchical. It consists of a central control and an autonomous distributed control. In central control, a robot torso is central and robot legs are peripheral. The torso sends a command and informations about a robot state to legs. In autonomous distributed control, each leg controls their movement. We are going to build these control systems using oscillators and sensor signals.

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A passive dynamic walking robot can walk down a gentle slope naturally without any actuator or controller, only by potential energy. Therefore, it is thought that the principle of walking exists in this phenomenon. By current researches, the passive dynamic walking has been confirmed for 2,4,and more than 6 legs. In the previous research, it was verified that a body of multi legged Passive Dynamic walker affected its gaits. In this research, the effect of body element of a quadrupedal Passive Dynamic Walking robot was analyzed in more detail on a simulator.

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The final goal of this work is to develop functional rubber sheets with micro rubber structures such as friction free, adhesion, and impact adsorption rubbers, etc. We report a new micro rubber 4-legged structure realizing miniaturization and integration to achieve very low friction rubber. First, flexible passive walking by the 4-legged structure is designed and analyzed. Then, we apply this mechanism to rubber structural sheets with 120-legged passive legs. The 120-legged sheet is analyzed by non-linear FEM, fabricated by micro rubber molding process and tested. In the various experiments, multi-legged passive walking by the micro rubber structural sheet is realized successfully.

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Most living organisms need locomotion to achieve a series of goals, such as eating, escaping, and breeding. In short, locomotion refers to the periodic activities of various parts of the body and their coordination mechanisms, such as walking, jumping, etc. Each locomotion is characterized by the animal’s body and its surroundings. The common of almost all locomotion is motion of the body center such as the trunk. Therefore, we believe that the periodic movement of the central part of the body is important for achieving movement. In this study, we focused on walking with limbs. We believe that the trunk movement using limbs is a combination of periodic movements of each limb. A central pattern generator (CPG) is used for generating periodic motion. We make robot generate gait to show that walk is the motion of a center part of a body. We propose a discrete control method of leg periodic motion using a ground signal to generate gait. In the periodic adjustment of the proposed method, the leg’s motion period is changed according to the CPG phase when the grounding state of the leg is switched. We use a modular legged robot to verify the proposed control method. We did experiments and simulations using a real robot and a physics engine. It is confirmed that although the initial stage of each leg movement is random, specific gait will be generated over time. Some gaits are gaits that are shown by animals, such as Tripod and Direct Wave.

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