Special Issue on Dynamically and Biologically Inspired Legged Locomotion

Abstract

Legged locomotion, including walking, running, turning, and jumping, strongly depends on the dynamics and biological characteristics of the body involved. Gait patterns and energy efficiency, for example, are known to be greatly affected by not only travel velocity and ground contact conditions but also by body configuration, such as joint stiffness and coordination, as well as foot sole shape. To understand legged locomotion principles, we must clarify how the body’s dynamic and biological characteristics affect locomotion. Effort must also be made to incorporate these characteristics inventively to improve locomotion performance, such as robustness, adaptability, and efficiency, which further refine the legged locomotion. This special issue on “Dynamically and Biologically Inspired Legged Locomotion,” studies on legged locomotion based on dynamic and biological characteristics, covers a wide range of themes, such as a rimless wheel, a design method for a biped based on passive dynamic walking, the analysis of biped locomotion based on passive dynamic walking and dynamically inspired walking, an analysis of gait generation for a triped robot, and quadruped locomotion with a flexible trunk. Since there are interesting papers on legged robots with different numbers of legs, we basically organized the papers based on the number of legs. Studies on “Dynamically and Biologically Inspired Legged Locomotion” are expected to not only realize and improve legged locomotion as engineering, but also to reveal the locomotion mechanism of various creatures as science.