AQuRo: a Cat-like Adaptive Quadruped Robot with Novel Bio-inspired Capabilities Provisionally accepted The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon. Notify me

Azhar Aulia Saputra^1*, Naoyuki Takesue¹, Kazuyoshi Wada¹, Auke J. Ijspeert² and Naoyuki Kubota¹

• ¹Graduate School of Systems Design, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan
• ²Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob), Switzerland

There are currently many quadruped robots suited to a wide range of applications, but traversing some terrains, such as vertical ladders, remains an open challenge. There is still a need to develop adaptive robots that can walk and climb efficiently. This paper presents an adaptive quadruped robot that, by mimicking feline structure, supports several novel capabilities. We design a novel paw structure and several point-cloud-based sensory structures incorporating a quad-composite time-of-flight sensor and a dual-laser range finder. The proposed robot is equipped with physical and cognitive capabilities which include: 1) a dynamic-density topological map building with attention model, 2) affordance perception using the topological map, and 3) a neural-based locomotion model. The novel capabilities show strong integration between locomotion and internal–external sensory information, enabling short-term adaptations in response to environmental changes. The robot performed well in several situations: walking on natural terrain, walking with a leg malfunction, avoiding a sudden obstacle, climbing a vertical ladder. Further, we consider current problems and future development.