Abstract
Only about half the Earth’s landmass is accessible to wheeled and tracked vehicles, yet people and animals can go almost everywhere on foot. Our goal is to develop novel locomotion systems that can go anywhere people and animals go. The systems we build combine dynamic control systems, actuated mechanisms and sensing to travel on terrain that is too rocky, sandy, muddy, snowy, wet or steep for existing conventional vehicles. This presentation will discuss progress at Boston Dynamics in building such systems, including WildCat, LS3, Atlas, RHex, PETMAN and others.