Remote Gait Computation and Wireless Data Collection on the Q8bot Miniature Quadruped

Low-cost legged robots typically handle all computation tasks with a single microcontroller, which could get overloaded without proper optimization. To tackle this challenge, this paper presents a lightweight control architecture and its implementation on Q8bot, a miniature quadruped platform developed by the authors. The proposed method is optimized for rapid prototyping and experimentation on legged robot gaits, encompassing off-board trajectory computation, responsive wireless control, and quasi-real-time data acquisition from the untethered robot. The software implementation resulted in easily-tunable, dynamic locomotion of the robot as well as convenient sensor data visualization. The robot achieved a stable trotting speed of 0.43 meters per second, and a turning speed of 5 radians per second.