Development of a minimalistic pneumatic quadruped robot for fast locomotion

In this paper, we describe the development of the quadruped robot “Ken” with the minimalistic and lightweight body design for achieving fast locomotion. We use McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles as actuators, providing high frequency and wide stride motion of limbs, also avoiding problems with overheating. We conducted a preliminary experiment, finding out that the robot can swing its limb over 7.5 Hz without amplitude reduction, nor heat problems. Moreover, the robot realized a several steps of bouncing gait by using simple CPG-based open loop controller, indicating that the robot can generate enough torque to kick the ground and limb contraction to avoid stumbling.