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We also tried simulating the robot with a trotting gait or a gait where legs diagonal to each other move in unison. Trot gaits tend to be faster and more efficient than bounding gaits, but they have not been attempted with our leg configuration and turning approach. In the simulation this was done by putting the front-right and hind left legs in phase with each other and having the remaining legs move with a phase difference with respect to the former.. The trot gait was found to produce stable walking behaviour, but when a turn was attempted, the robot fell over. So we will use a bounding gait for our final robot.
Quadrupedal Klann Linkage Design
We considered using a Klann linkage combined with a non-linear spring instead of sinousoidally driven links to walk, because a klann linkage generates a nice half-ellipsoidal path. Recent work with quadruped robots has shown that by having the legs of a quadruped robot follow a half-ellipsoid path and adjusting the 'stiffness' of the legs through this path to stiffen as they touch the ground highly stable walking can be obtained. We simulated a quadruped with klann linkages and demonstrated stable(albeit bumpy) walking even without nonlinear springs. However, when we attempted to turn, the robot fell over, so we decided not to use it.
