| To make a walking machine more
active and practical, reducing its weight without reducing its working ability
is the key issue of design. A robot with many actuators that produce a function
of a real animal's joint-base kinematics tends to be too heavy for a light-step
animal-like walking. In this paper we propose the concept of reducing the
number of actuators, which is extremely effective for reducing the weight
of a walker. Considering the essence of walking locomotion, absolutely indispensable
functions are an arbitrary movement of a swinging leg and some translation
of the center of gravity to maintain balance. Seven actuators for a biped,
four for a quadruped, six for a hexapod are the minimum numbers for essential
functions. A six-actuator hexapod is realized by trial manufacturing. Furthermore,
as a practical solution, more reduction is available by restricting walking
functions. A five-actuator biped and a three-actuator quadruped are introduced
in the experiments. |
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