Six-legged, bioinspired robot can run at 5.2m/s (w/video)
(Nanowerk News) STAR is a six legged bioinspired, 12cm long, Sprawl Tuned Autonomous Robot which can vary its sprawl angle in order to adapt to different surfaces.
Developed at UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, the robot, can achieve legged performance over rough surfaces and obstacles, using a high sprawl angle, and nearly wheel-like performance over smooth surfaces for small sprawl angles. By changing the sprawl angle it can climb over obstacle or crawl underneath them.
STAR can run at 5.2m/s (43 body lengths/second, Froude number 9.8) over a smooth surface which makes it the fastest untethered crawling robot.
STAR was developed by David Zarrouk, Andrew Pullin, Nick Kohut and Ronald Fearing.
More info on STAR is scheduled to be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013) in Germany in May.
