Walking machines have advantages over traditional vehicles, and have already accomplished tasks that wheeled or tracked robots cannot handle. Nevertheless, their use in industry and services is currently limited in scope. This book brings together methods and techniques that have been developed to deal with obstacles to wider acceptance of legged robots. Part I provides an historical overview. Part II concentrates on control techniques, as applied to Four-legged robots.

Legged robots have proven to be a promising locomotion system, capable of performing tasks that conventional vehicles cannot perform. Even more exc- ing is the fact that this is a rapidly developing ?eld of study for researchers from a variety of disciplines. Over the past three decades, legged locomotion technology has been developed all over the world, resulting in the invention of many important new machines and methods. However, only a few books have been published on the subject of multi-legged robots. The main objective of this book was to explore some of the major issues that the...