Bipedal Walking of an Octopus-Inspired Robot

In this paper a model is presented which describes an octopus-inspired robot capable of two kinds of locomotion: crawling and bipedal walking. Focus will be placed on the latter type of locomotion to demonstrate, through model simulations and experimental trials, that the robot’s speed increases by about 3 times compared to crawling. This finding is coherent with the performances of the biological counterpart when adopting this gait. Specific features of underwater legged locomotion are then derived from the model, which prompt the possibility of controlling locomotion by using simple control and by exploiting slight morphological adaptations.

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