Simulation and experiments of a four-legged robot that can locomote by crawling and jumping

Abstract

This paper describes design, simulation, and experiments of a mesoscale quadruped robot that can locomote by crawling and jumping. The robot has the length of 14 cm and the weight of 188 g. The robot is designed to perform crawling and jumping for the hybrid locomotion. The robot uses eight micro servo motors for crawling and four DC motors for jumping. The design has been validated by simulation and experiments. The experiments consist of three basic motions: crawling with steering, consecutive jumping, and combined motion of crawling and jumping. The simulation result shows that crawling speed of 1.62 cm/sec, jumping height of 7.2 cm, and jumping distance of 7.1 cm. The experimental results show that 91% of the simulation result for crawling and 77% for jumping.