| Poco - Quadruped Walking Robot |
--- PRELIMINARY INFORMATION ---
Poco is a simple quadruped walking robot with 2 active-DOF in each rear leg, and 3 active-DOF in each front leg.
In Poco, the front legs have vertical-axis rotation, similar to that in human legs. This is an experimental arrangement, meant to aid in turning movements. This is being used instead of a front-rear horizontal axis (as in Aramies [1] [2]), since we expect to be able to get a similar effect on turning as the front-rear axis without having to use large torque servos at the uppermost shoulder joints. In humanoid biped robots, the hip joint [sideways axis] servos experience the largest torques.
MECHANICAL:
In the front leg, the 2 lower joints represent shoulder (upper) and elbow (lower) joints, analogous to biological quadrupeds. In the rear leg, the joints represent hip (upper) and knee (lower).
The vertical-axis rotary joint is "experimental", and was added to aid turning movements.
(The rear leg has a rubber foot that had not been added to the front leg as yet).
Note that the "kink" was specifically added to the legs to facilitate this folding, but the kinks have no affect on operation of the legs when fully-extended (as shown in the first picture above), other than to change the servo angles by a few degrees.
