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Legged Robots

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Encyclopedia of Robotics

Synonyms

Climbing robots; Legged vehicles; Limbed systems; Jumping robots; Running robots; Walking robots; Walking machines

Definition

Legged robots use legs to move from one place to another. Legs provide an active suspension (Waldron and McGhee, 1986), so the motion of the main body of the robot can be largely decoupled from the terrain profile. With each step, a leg is temporarily lifted off the ground, so that discontinuous terrain can be overcome as well, allowing locomotion in places out of reach otherwise.

Legs are usually articulated rigid bodies, assumed to contact the environment only with their end effector. In most cases, this contact is unilateral, meaning that the robot can push but not pull on contact surfaces. In some cases, grasping, suction cups, magnets, adhesive materials, or miniature spine arrays can provide additional grip (Hirose et al., 1991; Kim et al., 2005; Yano et al., 1998).

Adapting wheeled vehicles to rough terrain has led in some cases to implant wheels...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dynamic Legged Systems (DLS) lab, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova, Italy

    Claudio Semini

  2. Université Grenoble Alpes, INRIA, Grenoble, France

    Pierre-Brice Wieber

Authors
  1. Claudio Semini
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  2. Pierre-Brice Wieber
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudio Semini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Marcelo H. Ang

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Oussama Khatib

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Bruno Siciliano

Section Editor information

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale, Sapienza Università di Roma, Via Ariosto 25, 00185, Roma, Italy

    Giuseppe Oriolo

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Semini, C., Wieber, PB. (2020). Legged Robots. In: Ang, M.H., Khatib, O., Siciliano, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Robotics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41610-1_59-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41610-1_59-1

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