Design of simple walking machines

The goal of this project is to learn the fundamental principles of legged locomotion in order to design and build simple robots that are still capable of robust locomotion. Furthermore, we are interested in how these locomotion principles scale to smaller or larger sizes. Especially at the smaller scale, the resulting systems cannot be overly complex. The final system will hopefully be mechanically simple, energy efficient, and robust to different environments like bumps and slopes. The work will entail research into legged locomotion, modeling of rigid body dynamics, design of a simple walking robot, and evaluation of its performance. A strong background in dynamics and mechatronics is ideal.