A Bio-inspired Ostrich-like Biped Robot

To look for the reason why the biped animal in nature can run with such high speed and to design a bio-inspired biped prototype which can behave the high speed running and jumping ability, this paper take the fastest bipedal animal in nature: ostrich as the research subject. Firstly, the body structure and motion characteristics of ostrich are investigated. Secondly, a simple mechanical structure of bio-inspired ostrich robot is designed based on the above biological investigated results. The robot is under-actuated with one actuator each leg, with a spring on the tarsometatarsus and a torsion spring on the metatarsophalangeal joint at the foot end. Finally, the high speed running and jumping running gait is planned and comparative simulations are implemented with different design requirements among pure rigid and rigid-flexible coupling scheme, which are rigid, only with spring, only with torsion spring, and with spring and torsion spring both, in detail. Simulation results show that the rigid-flexible coupling design scheme can achieve better high speed performance. It provides an insight for the design for legged robots.