Design of Lizard-Inspired Robot with Lateral Body Motion

A new lizard-inspired robot is presented in this paper, which enables to maintain its moving direction by lateral body motions even during high-speed bipedal running. First, a dynamic model for lizard-inspired robot is derived to simulate the lateral body motion of real lizard. Based upon the simulation using dynamic model, the lizard-inspired robot is tactfully built so that its hind leg is optimally designed on a 4-bar mechanism and its body is simplified to consist of two body links and a tail connected by two revolute joints. The experiments verify that the proposed robot can maintain its moving direction via proper lateral motions during high-speed bipedal running similar to that of real lizard.