Affordable Multi-legged Robots for Research and STEM Education: A Case Study of Design and Technological Aspects

As much interest in various aspects of legged locomotion arose in the robotics community over the last decade, many custom design walking robots have been demonstrated. However, they are usually very complicated and expensive. Thus, in this paper we present two families of small-to-medium size legged robots, that share the same basic concepts of using inexpensive, off-the-shelf servos as actuators, and the idea of making the mechanical design technologically simple. Although developed with a similar idea in mind, these robots differ with respect to many design choices and the manufacturing technology. In this paper we try to asses critically those differences, formulating some guidelines for future designs.