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Recently I have been watching Robert Full's talks on TED. He has some obscenely interesting works on robot locomotion. This has intrigued my curiosity and I have been trying to understand his works. I have tried to read many papers on these type of works but I have been unable to understand as I don't have the basics of these things.

Can anyone please direct me to a resource (ebooks, websites, video/audio lectures, forums etc.) where I can understand the basics of Robot Locomotion and gait functions?

Rick_2047
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Here's one source - Tilden's BEAM/Solarbotics stuff tends to be low-power, low-tech, but the flip side of this is that it is simple. I believe he even had a six-leg gait generator built using a single hex-inverter chip. A quick googling produced

http://faq.solarbotics.net/nvnet.html
http://faq.solarbotics.net/FAQ.html

Also, Valentino Braitenberg's "Vehicles" is a completely amazing book where the starting point is a simple reflexive control system and as the book progresses, increasing complexity is added. Google for 'braitenberg vehicles' and you will also find a simulator related to the book.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262521121/johnwiseman

JustJeff
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  • I knew about BEAM robotics. But as you say its overly simple and to make something cool out of such a technology is very hard (see the irony here).Also beam robotics is not as active now. There is no new work done on such a technology. But I think Vehicles is something that may get me started good – Rick_2047 May 08 '10 at 20:43
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I did some more digging and found out this PDF on MIT OCW. Its the course notes for Underactuated systems. I have not yet read the whole book but it is a nice resource to understand concepts of walking as most of the legged locomotion problems require underactuated control. You can find it here 1

Rick_2047
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