Dynamic Legged locomotion advantages have been long proven to tackle unstructured terrain, urban/ man-made terrain with ease. However, the performance exhibited by biological counterparts is still unmatched. This Research is targeted at addressing the aperiodicity displayed while executing dynamic gaits. It focuses on: (1) Design of quadrupeds, (2) Novel unified modeling approach, contrary to popular approaches adopt a un-compartmentalized model, (3) Motion planning for aperiodic gaits. In addition, the central hypothesis that biomimetic tails can enhance/augument dynamic motion will be tested on the platform as a result of this research.

Multiple mechanisms have been explored to arrive at a novel lightweight structure for a leg mechanism. This single degree of freedom mechanism, at present is tethered as seen in Fig. 1(a) on the treadmill to test its speed capabilities. With a current maximum speed of 3.2m/s, this CKC mechanism demonstrates capabilities of performing multiple dynamic gaits including trot, bound and amble when integrated onto a quadruped. The problems enforced by CKCs in dynamic modeling has been addressed by leveraging the single-perturbed formulation and fusing it into the hybrid-dynamic model framework, simulation results are shown in Fig. 1(b). With the constraint errors being asymptotically driven to zero, this formulation shows promise for real-time implementation.

Further, work is being done with the long-term goals in mind and research on equipping the single-DOF legs with the capability of high clearance jumps and integration of the leg into a quadrupedal robot, BOLT are in the pipeline.