Other walking work

Abstract

This book is not the first report of research on walking mechanisms. The hope that walking machines might provide off-road and difficult terrain mobility superior to that of wheeled vehicles has led quite a few different groups of researchers to study machine walking. A wheeled vehicle cannot deal with obstacles much larger than half the radius of its wheels. This is also true of tracked vehicles if you realize that each track is a virtual wheel with radius approximately the length of the vehicle. In addition to that limitation, the path that a wheeled vehicle travels must be completely free of obstructions for approximately the full width of the vehicle. A walking vehicle, on the other hand, does not need a path that is anywhere near so well prepared [55]. This chapter surveys some of the more important of such efforts to study walking.

The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant’s shoulder to mount on. —Samuel T. Coleridge