The Simplest Walking Robot: A bipedal robot with 1 actuator and 2 rigid bodies

>> Fig. 2 illustrates the design of the robot and the key parameters, with design rules given in Table II and the experimental robot’s final parameters given in Table III.

There is no Table II :(

Passive Dynamic Walking is interesting. I remember being really impressed by a video of a pair of legs going down a slope without any mechanical force on the "walker" itself to move them, just gravity and friction, I guess. That was back in 2014, probably. It seems like people have kept working on the concept. I have no way to tell though whether the idea really has cough cough legs, or it will just remain an engineering curiosity that can never be put to real work.

I can't really tell from this paper. Robotics is not my expertise (I work on autonomous navigation and decision-making for robots, but I'm not allowed to go anywhere near the robots. Electronics fry when I'm in proximity).

Edit: collection of passive dynamic walking videos:

https://youtu.be/FfKQSUhYjlY?si=9xGPqYwMeUyIwjqu

Did they just build this? [1]

The new thing here is that they can steer, by tweaking the motor phase.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832650580970.html

Photo here: https://i.imgur.com/GmIccbL.jpg

From https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.08401.pdf

Not the same mechanism but another simple single-motor/continuous-motion walker in lego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt2DszsjmQM .. The guy has a couple other walkers..

I'm thinking there must therefore be a Zoolander robot that can't turn left.

I think the Jansen linkage is an awesome way to get very life-like walking motion with minimal complexity

Yes, the design, two rigid bodies connected by a single actuator is very cool. However, it's the eyes that are most striking. The eyes and the rainbow colors. So very pretty. How could one not want to fund further development?

Well that just sounds like a bristlebot with extra steps.

if the constraints are like that, 1 actuator and 2 rigid bodies, i don't think i can find a better solution. so, mighty fine job, i guess?