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Mechanism and Structures: Humanoids and Quadrupeds

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Bioinspired Approaches for Human-Centric Technologies

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Abstract

The world, both natural and man-made, is a complex, unstructured, cluttered and dynamically changing environment through which humans and animals move with consummate ease, adapting to changing environments, terrains and challenges. Wheeled robots are increasingly able to work in some of these terrains, particularly those that have naturally or artificially smoothed surfaces, but there are, and will continue to be, many scenarios where only human-/animal-like levels of agility, compliance, dexterity, robustness, reliability and movement/locomotion will be effective. These domains will create new opportunities for legged locomotion (both bipedal and quadrupedal), but these new challenges will demand increased functionality in the legged robots, moving from the current domain dominated by simple walking and balance maintenance, to address key whole-body interaction issues during physical contact with humans, other robots and the environment (Fig. 5.1). This will require the development of robots that are able to exploit:

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central Research Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy

    Darwin G. Caldwell, Nikos Tsagarakis & Claudio Semini

Authors
  1. Darwin G. Caldwell
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  2. Nikos Tsagarakis
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  3. Claudio Semini
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Correspondence to Darwin G. Caldwell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Roberto Cingolani

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Caldwell, D.G., Tsagarakis, N., Semini, C. (2014). Mechanism and Structures: Humanoids and Quadrupeds. In: Cingolani, R. (eds) Bioinspired Approaches for Human-Centric Technologies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04924-3_5

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