A Bio-Inspired Biped Water Running Robot Incorporating the Watt-I Planar Linkage Mechanism

In this paper, a biped water running robot is developed by mimicking the water-running pattern of basilisk lizards. The dynamic mechanism of the robot was studied based on Watt-I planar linkages, and the movement trajectory of the double bar Assur Group was deduced to simulate the water-running foot trajectories of the basilisk lizard. A Central Pattern Generator (CPG)-based fuzzy control method was proposed to control the robot for realizing balance control and gait adjustment. The effectiveness of the proposed control method was verified on the prototype of a water running robot (weight: 320 g). When the biped robot is running on water, the average force generated by the propulsion mechanism is 1.3 N, and the robot body tilt angle is 5°. The experiment results show that the propulsion mechanism is effective in realizing the basilisk lizards-like water running patterns, and the CPG-based fuzzy control method is effective in keeping the balance of the robot.