Walking is one of the main gaits of terrestrial locomotion among legged animals. Walking is typically slower than running and other gaits. Walking is defined by an 'inverted pendulum' gait in which the body vaults over the stiff limb or limbs with each step. This applies regardless of the usable number of limbs—even arthropods, with six, eight, or more limbs, walk. In humans, walking has health benefits including improved mental health and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and death.
Bionics or biologically inspired engineering is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design engineering systems and modern technology.
Robot locomotion is the collective name for the various methods that robots use to transport themselves from place to place.
Cockroaches are insects belonging to the order Blattaria. About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known as pests.
Campaniform sensilla are a class of mechanoreceptors found in insects, which respond to local stress and strain within the animal's cuticle. Campaniform sensilla function as proprioceptors that detect mechanical load as resistance to muscle contraction, similar to mammalian Golgi tendon organs. Sensory feedback from campaniform sensilla is integrated in the control of posture and locomotion.
Blaberus discoidalis, commonly known as the discoid cockroach, tropical cockroach, West Indian leaf cockroach, false death's head cockroach, Haitian cockroach, and drummer, is a cockroach native to Central America of the “giant cockroach” family, Blaberidae.
A six-legged walking robot should not be confused with a Stewart platform, a kind of parallel manipulator used in robotics applications.
Legged robots are a type of mobile robot which use articulated limbs, such as leg mechanisms, to provide locomotion. They are more versatile than wheeled robots and can traverse many different terrains, though these advantages require increased complexity and power consumption. Legged robots often imitate legged animals, such as humans or insects, in an example of biomimicry.
Neurorobotics is the combined study of neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence. It is the science and technology of embodied autonomous neural systems. Neural systems include brain-inspired algorithms, computational models of biological neural networks and actual biological systems. Such neural systems can be embodied in machines with mechanic or any other forms of physical actuation. This includes robots, prosthetic or wearable systems but also, at smaller scale, micro-machines and, at the larger scales, furniture and infrastructures.
RHex is an autonomous robot design, based on hexapod with compliant legs and one actuator per leg. A number of US universities have participated, with funding grants also coming from DARPA.
Several organisms are capable of rolling locomotion. However, true wheels and propellers—despite their utility in human vehicles—do not seem to play a significant role in the movement of living things. Biologists have offered several explanations for the apparent absence of biological wheels, and wheeled creatures have appeared often in speculative fiction.
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of electronics and communication, computer science and engineering. Robotics involves the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics engineering, electronics, biomedical engineering, computer engineering, control systems engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to robotics:
LAURON is a six-legged walking robot, which is being developed at the FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik in Germany. The mechanics and the movements of the robot are biologically-inspired, mimicking the stick insect Carausius Morosus. The development of the LAURON walking robot started with basic research in field of six-legged locomotion in the early 1990s and led to the first robot, called LAURON. In the year 1994, this robot was presented to public at the CeBIT in Hanover. This first LAURON generation was, in contrast to the current generation, controlled by an artificial neural network, hence the robot's German name: LAUfROboter Neuronal gesteuert. The current generation LARUON V was finished in 2013.
Randall D. Beer is a professor of cognitive science, computer science, and informatics at Indiana University. He was previously at Case Western Reserve University. His primary research interest is in understanding how coordinated behavior arises from the neurodynamics of an animal's nervous system, its body and its environment. He works on the evolution and analysis of dynamical "nervous systems" for model agents, neuromechanical modeling of animals, biomorphic robotics, and dynamical systems approaches to behavior and cognition. More generally, he is interested in computational and theoretical biology, including models of metabolism, gene regulation and development. He also has a longstanding interest in the design and implementation of dynamic programming languages and their environments.
In robot combat, a self-righting mechanism or srimech is a device used to re-right a robot should it get flipped. Biohazard of BattleBots was the first robot to self-right.
Bio-inspired robotic locomotion is a fairly new subcategory of bio-inspired design. It is about learning concepts from nature and applying them to the design of real-world engineered systems. More specifically, this field is about making robots that are inspired by biological systems, including Biomimicry. Biomimicry is copying from nature while bio-inspired design is learning from nature and making a mechanism that is simpler and more effective than the system observed in nature. Biomimicry has led to the development of a different branch of robotics called soft robotics. The biological systems have been optimized for specific tasks according to their habitat. However, they are multifunctional and are not designed for only one specific functionality. Bio-inspired robotics is about studying biological systems, and looking for the mechanisms that may solve a problem in the engineering field. The designer should then try to simplify and enhance that mechanism for the specific task of interest. Bio-inspired roboticists are usually interested in biosensors, bioactuators, or biomaterials. Most of the robots have some type of locomotion system. Thus, in this article different modes of animal locomotion and few examples of the corresponding bio-inspired robots are introduced.
Radhika Nagpal is an Indian-American computer scientist and researcher in the fields of self-organising computer systems, biologically-inspired robotics, and biological multi-agent systems. She is the Augustine Professor in Engineering in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at Princeton University. Formerly, she was the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In 2017, Nagpal co-founded a robotics company under the name of Root Robotics. This educational company works to create many different opportunities for those unable to code to learn how.
Surface Robotics Laboratory is one of the major R & D Groups in the field of Robotics in Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. This group is actively engaged in the development of experimental mobile robots for various unconventional applications.
An insectoid robot is a, usually small, robot featuring some insect-like features. These can include the methods of locomotion, methods of navigation, and artificial intelligence based on insect models. Many of the problems faced by miniature robot designers have been solved by insect evolution. Researchers naturally look to insects for inspiration and solutions.
