An open source low-cost alligator-inspired robotic research platform

Abstract

Taking design inspiration from biological creatures can enable inheriting functional aspects such as locomotion of the target creatures in their robotic counterparts. Bio-inspired robots are particularly useful in dealing with applications involving surveillance, reconnaissance, and environment monitoring. Non-availability of inexpensive robotic platforms causes a barrier in the advancement of this field. This paper reports an open source alligator-inspired quadruped robotic platform which is easy and fast to prototype, open to design iterations and affordable. The reported approach utilizes laser cutting based fabrication and thereby reduces the development time drastically. The main features of the reported open source hardware system comprise of fabrication and assembly plan in the form of dxf files, embedded electrical circuits in the form of circuit diagrams and PCB layouts, and a locomotion control system in the form of software. We believe that such an open source design can accelerate research and development activities in the area of bio-inspired design as the researchers can improvise upon the open source model rather than starting from scratch.