Design principles for highly efficient quadrupeds and implementation on the MIT Cheetah robot

TLDR

Locomotion energy is mainly lost through actuator heat, transmission inefficiencies, and interaction losses with the environment. The study proposes four design principles—high‑torque density motors, low‑impedance transmission, energy‑regenerative electronics, and a low‑leg‑inertia architecture—to minimize these losses and implements them on the MIT Cheetah robot. The MIT Cheetah robot incorporates the four principles through specific design features such as high‑torque motors, compliant transmission, regenerative electronics, and lightweight legs. Its cost of transport is 0.51 at 2.3 m/s running, rivaling running animals of the same scale.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the design principles for highly efficient legged robots and the implementation of the principles on the MIT Cheetah robot. Three major energy loss modes during locomotion are heat losses through the actuators, losses through the transmission, and the interaction losses that includes all losses of the system interacting with the environment. We propose four design principles that minimize these losses: employment of high torque density motors, low impedance transmission, energy regenerative electronics and a design architecture that minimizes the leg inertia. We present the design features of the MIT cheetah robot as an embodiment of these principles. The resulting cost of transport (COT) is 0.51 during 2.3 m/s running, which rivals running animals in the same scale.