November 10, 2014 / by Shai Revzen / In news

Passive Walking

Link to poster

###Design of a passive compliant leg for a Hexapod robot

Mohammad Khodabakhsh, Jong Min Park, Joseph Jang, Shai Revzen

When legged robots are required to perform tasks like running, the compliance of the legs becomes important. We have designed and constructed a passive compliant leg for a hexapod robot. Recent research shows that the performance of this robot design can be influenced significantly by leg compliance. Our design is such that we can independently study the effects of leg compliance in the vertical direction and in the fore-aft direction. By attaching a sufficient number of motion tracking markers to the leg structures, we gain the ability to study the complete kinematics of the legs. Our design prioritizes manufacturability, as the majority of leg components were fabricated from materials commonly available in hardware stores, without specialized machining tools.