SoftFoot-Q: A Novel Adaptive Foot for Quadrupeds

—In this work, we present a novel prototype of soft adaptive foot, which is devised explicitly to be employed on quadrupedal robots. The SoftFoot-Q is a first step in the direction of favouring mechanically intelligent feet for robots and stresses the importance of moving towards haptic exploration of the environment through sensorized feet. These would lead to better algorithms for planning and control of locomotion that would improve robot stability. In the context of the EU project THING, the prototype is extensively tested and shows promising results.