Conceptual design of a multibody passive-legged crawling vehicle

Previous designs of walking vehicles relied on the concept of a single rigid body having one or several actuated legtype mechanisms. The concept proposed in this paper is based on the idea of an actuated multibody structure involving only movements of the trunk. The legs are passive. The structure of the flexible segmented body is realized using a series of variable geometry trusses (VGTs), which results in a configuration very similar to the body structure of insect larvae known as caterpillars. The authors propose that a VGT-based vehicle could emulate the excellent stability and mobility of its natural counterpart, the caterpillar, while holding the complexity of the power transmission and control algorithm to a minimum.