Toqro: A Flexible Quadruped Walking Robot With Topology Optimized Soft Legs

Compared with the conventional rigid-link-based robots, walking robots with soft legs have the advantages of high environmental adaptability and safety, which can greatly enhance the performance of locomotion robots when exploring unknown regions. In order to further explore the design potential for soft walking robots, we propose in this paper a novel quadruped walking robot called Toqro, in which an improved design of topology optimized soft leg is introduced to achieve flexible walking motions. To simplify the kinematic analysis, the realized soft robotic leg is modeled as a two-linkage structure with two rotating degrees of freedom (DOFs). Each leg of the robot is actuated by two servo motors and different actuation inputs are also designed to realize forward, backward, left-turn and right-turn motion patterns. In addition, the robot has integrated micro-controller, signal receiver and other electronic components to enable remote control. Experimental results show that the realized robot can successfully achieve flexible straight-line and turning motions, which verifies the feasibility of topology optimized soft legs for creating walking robots.