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A survey of bio-inspired compliant legged robot designs

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2012 Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 041001

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IOP PUBLISHING BIOINSPIRATION & BIOMIMETICS
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001 (20pp) doi:10.1088/1748-3182/7/4/041001

TOPICAL REVIEW

A survey of bio-inspired compliant legged

robot designs
Xiaodong Zhou and Shusheng Bi
Robotics Institute, School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing,
People’s Republic of China
E-mail: ssbi.buaa@gmail.com

Received 9 July 2012

Accepted for publication 18 October 2012
Published 14 November 2012
Online at stacks.iop.org/BB/7/041001

Abstract
The roles of biological springs in vertebrate animals and their implementations in compliant
legged robots offer significant advantages over the rigid legged ones in certain types of
scenarios. A large number of robotics institutes have been attempting to work in conjunction
with biologists and incorporated these principles into the design of biologically inspired
robots. The motivation of this review is to investigate the most published compliant legged
robots and categorize them according to the types of compliant elements adopted in their
mechanical structures. Based on the typical robots investigated, the trade-off between each
category is summarized. In addition, the most significant performances of these robots are
compared quantitatively, and multiple available solutions for the future compliant legged robot
design are suggested. Finally, the design challenges for compliant legged robots are analysed.
This review will provide useful guidance for robotic designers in creating new designs by
inheriting the virtues of those successful robots according to the specific tasks.
(Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)

1. Introduction with various forms in order to improve their dynamic

Biomechanical studies have revealed that all running animals,
from small insects to large mammals, generally achieve
fast speed by taking advantages of musculoskeletal springs
distributed in legs, backs and elsewhere in their bodies [1, 2].
For instance, the American cockroach runs at a maximum
speed of 50 BL s−1 (body lengths per second) [3], kangaroos
can hop as fast as 6.8 m s−1 [4], the cheetah is capable of a top
speed of 29 m s−1, etc [5]. It has been found that metabolic
energy can be saved due to the springy tissues such as tendons
and ligaments in storing and returning elastic strain energy
during locomotion [4, 6]. Furthermore, the centre of mass
(COM) motion and ground reaction force exhibited by the
running animals can be predicted by the spring–mass model
regardless of the variation in their leg number [7, 8].
By drawing inspiration from the locomotion of these
running animals, the roles of the elastic elements have
been implemented in fast running (or hopping) robots
performances. Compliant legged robots provide several
significant advantages in contrast to the traditional rigid legged
ones.
• Improved energy efficiency. Vertebrate animals minimize
the energy costs by making use of springy element such as
tendons, fascia lata, longissimus or aponeurosis ligaments
in their feet while they lose and regain kinetic energy. The
same is true of the compliant legged robots that exploit
mechanical springs to store strain energy temporarily and
reuse them in next phase. Nevertheless, for certain types of
rigid legged robots, part of the energy will be undesirably
dissipated to heat when an actuator does negative work [9].
• Higher speed and obstacle avoidance. For running
animals, the elastic tendons work as power amplifiers, like
catapults that can be stretched slowly and recoil rapidly
to achieve higher take off speed [10]. Likewise, an aerial
phase, during which all feet leave the ground, may happen

1748-3182/12/041001+20$33.00 1 © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK & the USA
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
when the springs are incorporated into the mechanical
design of the robotic legs or bodies. Furthermore, the
robots will leap over obstacles with a certain height.
Due to this reason, the Froude
√ number (a nondimensional
measure of speed: F = v/ gl, where v is the speed, g is
the acceleration of gravity and l is the leg length), which
cannot exceed 1 for the rigid legged robots with walking
gait unless all their feet depart from the ground, can be
above 1 for the compliant legged ones when running
[9, 11].
• Overcome bandwidth limitations and simplify the control
of dynamic locomotion. For highly dynamic behaviours
such as running or hopping, during which the impact will
happen, conventional robotic actuators are ineffective due
to the high impedance, lots of stiction, low bandwidth,
etc. However, these drawbacks can be obtained by
adding mechanical elasticity into them. Furthermore, the
mechanical springs will help the robots to exploit their
natural dynamics and thus simplify the control [12–14].
• Enhanced gait control. An autonomous robot usually
experiences varied surface stiffness, speed, gaits and so
forth; thus a variable stiffness leg is desirable to tune the
natural frequency of the system for effective gait control.
It has been proved by both biomechanics and robotics
that the adjustment of effective leg compliance plays an
important role in maintaining agile, robust and energy
efficient locomotion in response to changes in speed,
payload or terrain [15–18].
• Shock absorption. Most mammals make use of pads
attached in their legs to avoid excessive impact forces
and keep stable, because the energy can be absorbed
effectively due to the proper damping of the legs [9, 13].
Similarly, this principle has been utilized by Raibert’s one-
legged robot that has a rubber foot pad [19]. In addition,
DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod) can
survive from large heights due to the compliant nature of
its structure [20].
Owing to the merits of the compliant legged robots
listed above, numerous roboticists are turning to nature
for inspiration and attempting to work closely with
the corresponding biologists. For instance, much work has
been done by Full to provide biological inspirations to the
roboticists including Koditschek, Rizzi, Buehler, Cutkosky,
for the design of cockroach-inspired hexapod legged robots
such as RHex (Robotic Hexapod) [21], the Sprawl family of
robots, etc [22, 23]. Experiments showed that ‘RHex’ can
traverse rugged, broken and obstacle ridden ground without
any terrain sensing or actively controlled adaptation largely
due to its six compliant legs [24, 25]; ‘iSprawl’ can run
autonomously at speeds of over 15 BL s−1 (2.3 m s−1) as a
result of compliant leg with passive compliant flexure hip and
powering transmission system [23]. Other compliant legged
robots based on the bio-inspired spring–mass model have also
demonstrated remarkable running speed, energy efficiency
and robustness. For example, Raibert’s Planar Biped robot
can run as fast as 5.9 m s−1 by utilizing compressed air
[26]; Buehler constructed ARL ‘Monopod II’ by adding hip
springs to save and restore energy for swinging its leg during
2
Topical Review
flight and to synchronize the leg swing and vertical hopping
motion. The specific resistance (a nondimensional measure
for energy cost of locomotion, ε (v) = P (v) /mgv, where P
is the average power expenditure, m is the total mass of the
vehicle, g is the gravitational acceleration and ν is the forward
speed) was reduced approximately by 70% while running at
1.25 m s−1 [27, 28]; compliant mechanisms (or materials)
are incorporated into the ‘Bow Leg Hopper’ and ‘DASH’,
etc [20, 29]. Experiments demonstrated that the bow leg with
highly resilient fibreglass allows the robot to recover over 70%
of its energy from one hop to the next, and ‘DASH’ is capable
of running at speeds up to 15 BL s−1 and surviving falls from
large heights.
To the best of our knowledge, Raibert may have been the
first researcher to develop successful hopping and running
robots by introducing the compliant element (air springs)
into the leg design in the early 1980s [19]. Since that
time, numerous compliant legged robots have been conceived
and prototyped. These robots differ greatly in physical
configurations and purposes. For example, some of them make
use of air springs to achieve compliance, while others employ
coil springs or compliant mechanisms. Some of these robots
use telescoping legs while others make use of articulated ones.
Some robots utilize compressed air as an energy source, while
others use electricity or hydraulic actuators, or combination of
them. However, they follow the common theme of mimicking
the locomotion of the vertebrate animals, especially the elastic
properties of the tendons, muscles or ligaments.
The objective of this review is to develop a general
classification for the compliant legged robots based on
a survey of the most published successful designs. The
review will aid a designer in determining which aspects of
proven designs may be available for a specific application,
and allow the designer to understand the advantages and
disadvantages of different structural types. By studying the
existing representative running robots, future roboticists will
be able to create new machines by carrying over prominent
features from the successful solutions.
The rest of the review is organized as follows: firstly,
the biologically inspired compliant legged robots are grouped
into three categories in terms of the realization of leg
compliance: (1) compressed air, (2) coil springs and (3)
compliant mechanisms. The design features as well as the
performances of some typical robots of each category are
then summarized in detail. In particular, the state-of-the-art
compliant legged robots in each class are presented. After
that, the trade-off between each category is discussed in depth,
and then quantitative comparisons are carried out for the most
significant performances such as energy efficiency and speed
of these robots. Based on the structural characteristics of the
representative robots investigated, some available solutions for
future compliant legged robot design are suggested. Finally,
the design challenges associated with bio-inspired running
robots in practice are also addressed. It should be noted that as
a result of space constraints, it is impossible to discuss all the
published compliant legged robots in this review. Instead, we
have tried to create a taxonomy to which a significant number
of published compliant legged robots can be mapped.
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 1. (a) 3D one-legged hopping machine and (b) the pneumatic circuit of its leg [19] (courtesy of Marc Raibert / MIT Leg Laboratory).
2. Category I: compliant legs with compressed air
The high force/torque to weight, high power to weight ratios
and the inherent compliant behaviour of pneumatic actuators
promote their application in bio-inspired legged robots. More
importantly, gas compressed in a container with high specific
strength has a very high energy capacity in comparison with
steel, fibreglass, rubber and even animal tendon in tension.
Pneumatic cylinder and pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs)
are the two most common forms of compressed air that are
applied in legged robots [30]. The PAMs have two sources
of compliance: gas compressibility and the dropping force to
contraction characteristic. The latter effect is typical for PAMs
while the first is similar to standard pneumatic cylinders. From
the point of view of bionics, they may be the direct way to
emulate the functions of muscles as well as elastic tendons of
animals. In this section, some design details and features of the
robots based on compressed air will be presented according
to the leg configurations (linear or articulated joints, similarly
hereinafter).
2.1. Raibert’s running and hopping robots (linear joints)
Raibert is widely respected as one of the pioneers in the
field of dynamic stable legged robots. He has been studying
the legged robots for more than 30 years since the Leg
Laboratory was founded by him in 1980. During the early
period, a series of hopping and running robots had been built
by the lab, such as the planar and 3D one-legged hopping
machine, quadruped running machine and planar biped, etc
[19, 31]. These robots typically use linear telescoping joints to
change length. Except for the first one-legged planar hopper,
which was pneumatically actuated, others are composed of
strong hydraulic actuators and air springs for the axial leg
compliance. Based on their ground-breaking work, he founded
Boston Dynamics with his colleagues in 1992. Through the
development of more than three decades, a variety of novel
advanced robots such as ‘BigDog’, ‘RHex’, ‘Cheetah’, etc
3
Topical Review
have been developed [21, 32, 33], some of which will be
discussed in depth in this review. In the following paragraphs,
the mechanical design and principle of the 3D one-legged
machine with compliant leg will be investigated in detail while
other telescoping legged robots developed by this lab will be
unstated due to their resemblance.
As illustrated in figure 1(a), the 3D one-legged machine
consists of a body and a telescoping leg. The body is used
to mount hip actuators, valves and other computer interface
electronics. The leg is a double acting pneumatic cylinder,
with a rubber cushion attached to the lower end to form a
padded foot and a linear potentiometer at the top end. The
arrangement of pneumatic cylinder, pressure regulator and
check valve forms an air spring which can be used to absorb
energy when the leg shortens under external load, and supply
energy when the leg lengthens (see figure 1(b)). In this manner,
the air spring transfers the kinetic energy from one hop to the
next and thus the energy cost of continous hopping is reduced.
The control system adjusts thrust by regulating the
pressure in the lower chamber of the leg cylinder while a
pressure regulator and check valve connected to the upper
chamber maintain a fixed charge of air. The upper chamber
acts as a passive spring. The hopping motion is produced by
the flow of compressed air to and from the lower chamber
of the leg actuator. To provide thrust, the control system
exhausts air from the bottom chamber of the leg during support.
Special quick-exhaust valves are used to dump air rapidly
for maximum thrust. The timing of pressure and exhaust are
chosen to excite the spring–mass oscillator formed by the leg
and body [19]. Experiments showed that the robot can keep its
balance without external support, while hopping in place and
while travelling about the laboratory. The maximum recorded
speed was 2.2 m s−1 [34].
It is noteworthy that among Raibert’s telescoping legged
robots, the Planar Biped manipulates the stiffness of the leg by
controlling the resting air pressure in the leg spring during the
flight phase [35]. Empirical experiments showed that higher
pressures cause the spring to be stiffer and reduce the duration
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 2. (a) Biped ‘Lucy’ and (b) the one-DOF pendulum powered
by PPAMs [37] (courtesy of Bram Vanderborght, Vrije Universiteit
Brussels).
of the stance phase and thereby allowed the robot to achieve
a higher running speed. As far as we know, this might be
the original method to realize resonant bouncing motion by
adjusting the stiffness of the compliant legs. In addition, the
Planar Biped was capable of high performance behaviours
such as front flips due to the large hydraulic compressor and air
compressor it was tethered to. Following Raibert, pneumatic
spring is also incorporated into the articulated leg design
of the quadruped KOLT (Kinetically Ordered Locomotion
Test) robot in order to achieve tuneable stiffness (see
subsection 3.4) [36].
2.2. Bipedal Lucy and Mowgli (articulated joints)
‘Lucy’ was developed to evaluate the advantages of pleated
pneumatic artificial muscles (PPAMs) as compliant actuators
for walking robots. As shown in figure 2(a), it is a six degrees
of freedom (DOF) planar biped robot actuated by 12 PPAMs
[37]. It is composed of an upper body and two identical legs
which consist of a foot, a lower leg and an upper leg. All the
parts are connected by one-dimensional pin joints forming the
ankle, knee and hip. The hip is then connected to a horizontal
and vertical sliding mechanism by means of a seventh pin joint
to prevent the robot from turning over in the frontal plane.
The most significant feature of ‘Lucy’ is that each
articulated joint of the robot is actuated by a pair of PPAMs
and thus is made modular. Since the PAMs can only pull,
they are set in an antagonistic manner in order to realize a bi-
directionally working revolute joint. Since stiffness depends
on a sum of gauge pressures while position is determined by
differences in gauge pressure, the angular position and stiffness
of each joint can be controlled independently.
A control strategy was developed based on the torque and
compliance characteristics of the antagonistic muscle setup. It
consists of two parts: a joint trajectory tracking controller that
calculates the necessary torque to track a desired trajectory and
a compliance controller that reduces the energy consumption
and the valve switching. The strategy is then implemented
on a one-DOF pendulum (setup actuated by an antagonistic
pair of PPAMs, see figure 2(b)). Both the simulations and
experimental results indicate that the proposed strategy turned
4
Topical Review
Figure 3. Bipedal ‘Mowgli’ [38] (courtesy of Ryuma Niiyama,
University of Tokyo).
out to be effective in reducing the amount of control activity
and energy consumption without harming tracking precision
by exploiting the natural dynamics of the device (or choosing
actuator compliance).
Apart from the ‘Lucy’, a similar bio-inspired biped
jumping robot named ‘Mowgli’ (as shown in figure 3) has been
constructed based on the biological musculoskeletal structures
[38]. It consists of two articulated legs with hip, knee and ankle
joints actuated by six McKibben PAMs. ‘Mowgli’ differs from
‘Lucy’ in that the muscles antagonistic to the PAMs are made
of rubber tubes instead of PAMs in order to simplify the body.
Experiments showed that the robot can jump as high as 0.5 m,
more than 50% of its body height, and can land softly. Other
experimental results with legged robots actuated by PPAMs
showed that tuneable leg compliance allows bipedal robot to
provide human-like multi-modal locomotion such as a walking
from standing and a sequential jumping [39].
3. Category II: compliant legs with steel coil springs
The steel coil springs are the most popular and available parts
that can be utilized to construct compliant legs. For instance,
Buehler designed hopping and quadruped running robots by
making use of the springs in the axis of the legs or hip joint
of the robot [27, 40, 41]. In this section, several compliant
legged robots with coil springs will be presented in sequence
according to the configuration and number of their legs.
3.1. ARL Monopod (linear joints)
Inspired by Raibert’s one-legged hoppers (planar and 3D
hopper) using pneumatic and powerful hydraulic actuators,
respectively, Buehler et al had attempted to make use of
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 4. (a) The experimental setup of ARL ‘Monopod II’ and (b) the schematic of its important variables [43] (courtesy of Martin
Buehler / Ambulatory Robotics Lab, McGill University).
Figure 5. (a) One-legged hopping robot—‘Kenken’ and (b) its leg mechanism [46] (courtesy of S H Hyon, Tohoku University).
low power electric motors to drive the Monopod robots. The
Monopod I and II were developed successively and they
share much common in mechanical structures except minor
modifications [27, 40]. ‘Monopod II’ (see figure 4(a)) consists
of a body connected to a prismatic leg at the hip joint which
was directly actuated via a ball-screw, timing belt and pulley–
string mechanism. It differs from ‘Monopod I’ in that rubber
springs are inserted into the hip to achieve rotary compliance
(shown in figure 4(b)). In addition, the spring in the prismatic
leg can return to its initial length at the end of each stance
phase to release all its stored energy and its length can be
controlled during the flight phase. From a biologically inspired
perspective, ‘Monopod II’ is a good example to mimic the
functions of tendons as pogo stick principle and return springs
in animals [9, 42].
It is reported that ‘Monopod I’ spends 40% of its total
energy requirement to swing its leg when running at a speed
of 1.2 m s−1 [40]. However, when hip spring, leg modification
and controlled passive dynamic running control strategy are
implemented, a large amount of energy can be saved. The
experiments with ‘Monopod II’ showed that it achieved a
forward speed of 1.25 m s−1, and the specific resistance was
reduced approximately by 70% compared with ‘Monopod
I’ [27]. It reduced power consumption by swinging its leg
during flight to save and restore energy in a hip spring, and
synchronize the leg swing and vertical hopping motion [44].
5
Topical Review
3.2. Kenken (articulated joints)
‘Kenken’ (see figure 5(a)) is a one-legged running robot
mimicking the hindlimb of a dog. As illustrated in figure 5(b),
the articulated leg consists of hip, knee and ankle joints,
amongst which only the ankle joint is passive while the others
are actuated by hydraulic actuators. The most striking feature
of ‘Kenken’ is the arrangement of the leg spring that is attached
between thigh and heel and parallel to the shank [45]. During
stance, the spring both transfers the kinetic energy of the robot
to elastic potential energy and absorbs energy from impulse
for next stride. Furthermore, it allows the parallel four-bar
linkage comprising the foot, shank, thigh and body to extend
and shorten automatically during the flight phase as long as
the inertia of the links is chosen appropriately.
A controller is developed empirically and implemented on
the robot based on the dynamic characteristics of the under-
actuated robotic system. Experiments showed that it can hop
stably at speeds below 1 m s−1 while the forward and vertical
speed and body pitch angle oscillate drastically at speeds over
1.5 m s−1. Although the problem related to stability at higher
speed remains, the experimental results demonstrate that the
proposed hindlimb mechanism is effective for running robots
[46].
Virtually, a kangaroo-inspired one-legged hopping robot
named ‘Uniroo’, which is kinematically similar to ‘Kenken’,
had been constructed at MIT Leg Laboratory in 1991 [31].
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 6. (a) ‘Scout II’ and (b) its compliant prismatic leg [48, 49] (courtesy of Ioannis Poulakakis and Didier Papadopoulos, respectively,
Ambulatory Robotics Lab, McGill University).
‘Uniroo’ differs from ‘Kenken’ in that the ankle coil spring
of the former is placed between the foot and shank and in
addition, a single-DOF tail was added to the former. The
robot can hop in a range of forward velocities from 0 to
1.8 m s−1 for at least a minute by regulating the angular
momentum. The experimental results indicated that a virtual
leg concept can be applied to control the balance of legged
robots that have a non-symmetrical mechanical structure.
Furthermore, it is observed that a small angular momentum
is a characteristic of ‘smooth’ hopping and underlies a very
natural motion [47].
3.3. Scout II (linear joints)
‘Scout II’ (see figure 6(a)) is an untethered quadruped running
robot consisting of a rigid body with four compliant prismatic
legs. The most significant feature of this robot is that only a
single actuator per leg locates at the hip joint. As illustrated
in figure 6(b), the lower and upper parts of the leg are
connected to each other by a mechanical spring to form a
compliant prismatic joint which is completely passive during
the motion of the robot. By taking advantage of the simplest
controllers with minimal sensing and feedback, as well as
passive dynamics of the mechanical system, different running
gaits such as dynamic walking, pronking and bounding can be
realized [48].
It has been demonstrated experimentally that ‘Scout II’
achieves dynamically stable running of up to 1.3 m s−1 on flat
ground by using a bounding gait. Energetic analysis reveals a
highly efficient system with a specific resistance of only 1.4
[41]. Furthermore, the running controller largely depends on
the passive dynamics of the mechanical system rather than
too much task-level or body-state feedback. These results
contribute to the increasing evidence that apparently complex
dynamically dexterous tasks may be controlled via simple
control laws. The main disadvantage of ‘Scout II’ is that
the ground clearance is not high enough to be competent for
rough terrains. Nevertheless, it promoted the emergence of
the hexapod running robot ‘RHex’ which will be discussed in
subsection 4.2 [24].
6
Topical Review
3.4. KOLT (articulated joints)
The biomimetic robot ‘KOLT’ (see figure 7(a)) is constructed
to study the quadruped galloping gait by Ohio State (OSU)
and Stanford Universities [36, 50]. The mechanical design
of the quadruped is based on biological measurements of a
domestic goat. As shown in figure 7(b), the articulated leg of
‘KOLT’ is composed of the thigh, shank, coil springs and body
frame [51]. The main design objectives of the ‘KOLT’ Legs
are to achieve minimal impact loss, variable stiffness energy
store system and low inertia. Several designs, such as ‘OSU
DASH’ (dynamic articulated structure for high-performance)
leg (see figure 7(b)), ‘Stanford DASH’ leg and an electro-
pneumatic leg (figure 8(a)) have been attempted in order
to accomplish the goals listed above [50, 52]. All the three
legs’ linkages were designed to achieve an optimal nonlinear
stiffness–displacement relationship. The body reaction forces,
inertia of the legs, unsprung mass and thus impact loss can be
minimized by locating the actuators near the hip.
For the OSU and Stanford DASH legs, the hip and knee
joints are actuated by separated motors. One of the motors
drives the cable, which effectively runs from the hip to the
foot, to retract the leg during flight. This retraction extends
the springs to store energy which is used to compensate for
the energy loss of the system during impact or other losses. The
stored energy is released to provide impulse when the foot is
on the ground. The other motor actuates the hip joint through a
timing belt device. The Stanford leg differs from OSU’s mainly
in that the routing of the knee-flex cable (similar to that shown
in figure 8(b)) is altered in order to decouple the knee flexion
from the hip rotation as much as possible. Moreover, light
built-up sheet aluminium structures are adopted to improve
stiffness without an increase in weight.
Compared to the two earlier versions, the electro-
pneumatic leg design has several advantages. First and
foremost, the magnitude of the thrust impulse can be well
controlled in contrast to the cam release mechanism in which
that is largely lost. Second, the gas spring incorporated into
the leg can maximize the energy stored and minimize the
peak force compared to a coil spring by selecting spring
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001 Topical Review

Figure 7. (a) The ‘KOLT’ quadruped robot and (b) its ‘OSU DASH’ leg test on treadmill [36, 51] (courtesy of Kenneth Waldron and Luther
R Palmer, respectively, Robotic Locomotion Laboratory of Stanford University and the Ohio State University).

Figure 8. (a) Photograph of the electro-pneumatic leg and (b) schematic of its thrusting system [36] (courtesy of Kenneth Waldron, Robotic
Locomotion Laboratory, Stanford University).

properties carefully. Third, it may allow better leg performance
as a result of pneumatic valves’ faster response than that of
electromechanical clutches of the requisite size. Finally, the
electro-pneumatic legs are adopted to form the quadruped
‘KOLT’ and experiment showed that the trotting speed reached
1.1 m s−1 by employing two thrust control methods. Energetic
studies showed that the efficiency of the actuators and the
total efficiency of the thrusting system are 49% and 22%,
respectively, and the calculated specific resistance is 1.18.
Additionally, it has been found that ground impact losses are
approximately linearly related with the apex height [36].
3.5. Spring Flamingo (serial elastic actuators)
The ‘Spring Flamingo’ (see figure 9(a)) is a planar bipedal
compliant legged robot which is developed partly to study the
force control techniques of the series elastic actuators (SEA).
The robot has an actuated hip, knee and ankle on each leg. The
cable drives which are used to transmit power to each joint
allow all the six motors to be located in its upper body. Unlike
the compliant elements mentioned above that are used to store
energy, the SEA (shown in figure 9(b)) is employed at each
DOF mainly in order to realize the accurate force control and
shock tolerance [53].
The SEA is created by placing a spring between the
motor and the load. Meanwhile, a control system allows the
motor to reduce the difference between the desired force
and the measured force signal. It should be noted that
the motor here can be electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic or
other traditional servo system. The resulting SEA system
shares many beneficial properties with muscle such as
low impedance, high force-fidelity, low friction and good
bandwidth. Accordingly, they are well suited for the bionic
compliant legged robots that can be used in unstructured
environments.
Experiments showed that natural dynamics can be
exploited in the control of the bipedal walking robots by taking
advantage of SEA. For instance, the swing-leg can swing freely
once started; the kneecap can prevent the leg from inverting;
and a compliant ankle can be used to naturally transfer the
centre of pressure along the foot and help in toe-off. Each of
these mechanisms helps make control easier to achieve and

7
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 9. (a) Photograph of the ‘Spring Flamingo’ and (b) schematic diagram of a SEA (courtesy of Jerry E Pratt, Institute for Human and
Machine Cognition).
results in motion that is smooth and natural looking. The robot
can walk as fast as 1.2 m s−1 and consume energy as low as
15 W with a weight of 13.5 kg. Moreover, a control bandwidth
of approximately 20 Hz is achieved [31].
In addition to the foregoing legged robots with coil
springs, other bio-inspired compliant legged running robots
such as ‘BigDog’ [32], ‘Rush’ [54], ‘Grillo’ jumping robot
[55], etc are also developed with different purposes. They
cannot be listed in detail in this section due to the space
constraints.
4. Category III: compliant legs with compliant
mechanisms
In recent years, increasing interest has been dedicated to the
robotic leg design using compliant mechanisms due to the
advances in manufacturing technologies and novel materials.
Some of these robots are made springy in the whole leg to
achieve light weight and robust performance, such as ‘Bow
Leg Hopper’ [56], ‘RHex’ [24], etc. Others are designed to
achieve local compliance by adding flexural elements to the
transmission systems of the legs or to certain joint designs,
or to both of them. For instance, the ‘MABEL’ robot makes
use of fibreglass for the legs’ transmission system [57]; flexure
joints are introduced into the leg design of ‘DASH’, ‘HAMR3’,
centipede-inspired millirobot, etc [20, 58, 59]; and the Sprawl
family of robots both introduce compliant elements in the legs’
stroke direction and hip joints [23, 60]. The design details of
these robots will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
4.1. Bow Leg Hopper
As illustrated in figure 10(a), the most significant feature of the
‘Bow Leg Hopper’ is the highly resilient leg that resembles an
archery bow. The Hopper consists of a curved leaf spring made
of laminated fibreglass, foot, freely pivoting hip and the bow
8
Topical Review
string that holds the leg in compression to store elastic energy.
The guiding principle is that the body and leg form a natural
spring–mass oscillator that can mimic the essential biological
aspects of running that uses a leg to bounce off the ground.
Figure 10(b) shows the mechanical structure of the hopper
which is actuated by two servo motors. The top one is used
to rotate a disc carrying the drive pulley that can engage the
bow string in order to compress the leg while the bottom one
positions the leg during flight. During hopping, three phases
are experienced by the thrust mechanism of the ‘Bow Leg
Hopper’. Firstly, the bow string is retracted to store energy
in leg compression during flight; then the leg is compressed
further and the strings slack when its foot touches ground; the
leg is relaxed after energy is transferred from the leg to motion.
Subsequently the leg is retracted again and the cycle repeats
for each bounce.
The novelty of the design is for three reasons: low power
motors can be competent for actuation of the robot due to
the energy storage and control taking place during flight; the
hopping cycle is energy efficient since the spring has high
restitution and no negative work is done by actuators during
the process; the leg pivots freely at the hip to minimize body
disturbance torque.
Preliminary experiments with a planar prototype have
demonstrated impressive performance: the robot can hop as
high as 50 cm, compared with the theoretically possible
high of 80 cm based on leg elastic energy capacity,
with the present machine mass and reduced gravity 0.35g
(3.4 m s−2). Meanwhile, it can leap over obstacle fields
composed of ‘stepping stones’ separated by ‘holes’ in which
the hopper must not land. The hopper shows high efficiency
and recovers over 70% of its energy from one hop to the
next by bouncing passively. Hence, energy consumption is
surprisingly low and the machine can run for 45 min on a small
battery pack, which comprises only 5% of the total machine
mass. A highest horizontal running speed of 1.0 m s−1 has been
observed although high speed is not the focus of the work [56].
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 10. (a) Photograph of the hopper prototype and boom and (b) exploded schematic of the hopper [29] (courtesy of Garth Zeglin,
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University).
Figure 11. Musculoskeletal Athlete Robot [62] (courtesy of Ryuma
Niiyama, University of Tokyo).
The implementation of fibreglass leaf springs on leg
design for elastic energy storage can be dated back to the
Monopod which uses a rotary ankle joint for control of leg
length [61]. More recent research about the application of leaf
springs in legged locomotion is the human-inspired bipedal
Athlete robot (shown in figure 11) that makes use of elastic
blade feet to provide elasticity of the tendons around the ankle
joint.
9
Topical Review
Figure 12. Photograph of ‘RHex’ [63] (courtesy of Daniel E
Koditschek, Kod∗ lab, University of Pennsylvania).
4.2. RHex and its variations
RHex (see figure 12) is a power autonomous, untethered,
compliant legged hexapod robot. The original concept for
‘RHex’ was introduced by Buehler in the late 1990s in McGill
University arising from insights about cockroach running
offered by Full at the University of California, Berkeley
[12, 21, 63]. Since that time, several robotics institutes and
biomimetics labs such as AI Lab at the University of Michigan,
Kod∗ lab at University of Pennsylvania, Boston Dynamics,
etc have participated in ‘RHex’ project [25]. Meanwhile, a
variety of RHex-like hexapedal platforms such as Research
RHex, Rugged RHex, ‘EduBot’, ‘SandBot’, X-RHex, etc have
been developed due to its success [64]. Despite their different
purposes, these robots share a common feature in that they
consist of a rigid body with six compliant legs made out of
compliant materials to produce energetic running gaits, and
each with a single rotary actuator at the hip.
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 13. RHex’s four alternative legs [65] (courtesy of Pei-Chun
Lin, University of Michigan).
A large amount of work has been done to improve the
dynamic performances of ‘RHex’ by optimizing its compliant
legs. The legs of ‘RHex’ have gone through several design
iterations and improvements such as delrin leg, hard four-bar
leg, soft four-bar leg and half-circle (C-shaped) leg (from left
to right, see figure 13) [65]. Amongst the different shapes
studied above, the C-shaped leg has attracted the most interest
largely due to its exceptional mechanical properties and thus
is adopted in ‘RHex’ and its many siblings. The resulting
robot can navigate over highly broken, unstable, complex and
natural outdoor terrain with competence, and runs at better
than 1 BL s−1 over terrain few other robots can negotiate at all
[24]. Additionally, a variety of interesting locomotion tasks,
including walking, running, pronking, leaping and flipping,
climbing stairs, recovering from failures and even running
Figure 14. (a) ‘EduBot’ and (b) the schematic of its tunable stiffness composite leg [68] (courtesy of Kevin C Galloway, University of
Pennsylvania).
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Topical Review
upright on (modified) rear legs, had been achieved by ‘RHex’
[64]. The robustness of the robot is mainly attributed to its
mechanical simplicity, especially the unique shape of the
compliant legs. Furthermore, experimental results showed that
the COM trajectories of ‘RHex’ are fit to the Spring Loaded
Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) model found in running animals
[66].
Nevertheless, these legs with fixed stiffness usually
perform optimally for only a small range of conditions such
as a certain robot weight, terrain, speed and gait. Since
the biomechanical studies suggest that animals’ abilities to
tune their effective leg compliance in response to changing
terrain conditions plays an important role in their agile,
robust locomotion [15], passive variable compliant legs have
been designed to improve the adaptability of the final leg
mechanism. This concept is implemented on ‘EduBot’ (see
figure 14(a)) which is equipped with variable compliant legs.
As shown in figure 14(b), the compliance of composite
C-shaped leg can be adjusted by the method of structure-
controlled stiffness. A self-locking actuation system was
integrated into the leg to adjust the position of a compliant
slider which serves as the tuning element to adjust the effective
leg stiffness. The stiffness of the leg can be detected by taking
advantages of the rotary sensor attached to the shaft of a small
dc motor [67].
Experimental investigations with ‘EduBot’ are carried out
on different surfaces (carpet, padding and grass) and with two
different payload configurations (0 and 0.91 kg). The results
from thousands of running experiments revealed that for the
forward speeds of 1.8–2.6 m s−1, a soft leg appears to be
nearly as efficient as stiffer legs although with a slower top
speed on stiffer terrains (or with no mass added). However, on
softer terrain (or with an added payload), stiffer legs enable
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 15. (a) The ‘AMASC’ and (b) its cable-routing diagram [17] (courtesy of Jonathan Hurst, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
University).
faster and more efficient locomotion than softer ones. All these
results suggest that the locomotion speed and efficiency of the
robot for changing terrains and payloads can be improved by
the adaptive leg compliance, which is in accordance with the
findings of biomechanical studies [16, 68].
More recently, a quadruped robot named ‘Canid’ was
designed to achieve high speed bounding and galloping gaits
arising from insights about mammalian running animals and
RHex-like robots [63, 69]. The central hypotheses motivating
the ‘Canid’ design lie in the actuated compliant spine
mechanism which will supplement the forces it can apply
to the body masses for the specific purpose of exciting high
speed bounding gaits. The body is separated into two nearly
identical ones with an actuated and compliant spine between
them. A carbon-fibre leaf spring comprises the principal spine
component, which can be actuated via the antagonistically
mounted cable drive motors for the specific purpose of storing
(and retrieving) energy. Another difference between ‘Canid’
and ‘RHex’ is that the former’s legs are actuated by utilizing
four-bar mechanisms through which the speed and torque of
legs can be adjusted for the nominal stance and swing stroke
[69]. Preliminary experimental results have demonstrated that
the robot preloads energy into its elastic spine before releasing
the spring potential, and it will vault into the air once thrusting
its legs. It has been observed that ‘Canid’ has leaped a distance
of 64 cm (0.82 BL) within 0.6 s. This suggests that the robot
is capable of appropriately explosive motions and effective
steady state bounding gait may be possible.
4.3. MABEL
The biped walking and running robot ‘MABEL’ is constructed
based on AMASC (The Actuator with Mechanically
Adjustable Series Compliance) and ECD (electric cable
differential) legs, which are both designed based on the bio-
inspired mass–spring model by virtue of physical springs and
other passive dynamics. As shown in figure 15(a), ‘AMASC’
is a bench-mounted compliant joint created to achieve variable
leg compliance by utilizing an antagonistic pair of fibreglass
springs and designed as a prototype for walking and running
robots [57, 70]. The most important features of the ‘AMASC’
are that the stiffness and the no-load position of the joint can
be adjusted by two corresponding motors independently, and
plenty of energy is stored in fibreglass plates linked to spiral
pulleys (shown in figure 15(b)). Another innovation on the
‘AMASC’ is the pairing of energy-storing series elasticity with
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Topical Review
a cable drive that transmits high torques, eliminates backlash,
has low frictional losses and low inertia compared to gears by
locating the motors remotely from the joint being actuated.
Moreover, the addition of series elasticity can deal with the
damage to cable drives caused by the impacts. Testing of
‘AMASC’ shows that the simulated model closely matched
the dynamic behaviour of the real device through a range of
frequencies and forces [17].
The ideas behind the ‘AMASC’ are incorporated into
the design of a bipedal robot named BiMASC (Biped with
Mechanically Adjustable Series Compliance). This prototype
has three DOFs per leg: the leg length, leg angle and leg
stiffness [57]. Experiments showed that the energy storage
capacity of ‘BiMASC’ is reduced and internal forces beyond
the applied joint forces are increased due to the application of
antagonistic pairs of springs [70].
Based on the lessons learned from ‘AMASC’ or
‘BiMASC’, the ‘ECD’ leg is designed and incorporated
into a monopod named Thumper and the biped ‘MABEL’,
respectively (figure 16(a)). The novel leg is named deriving
from the use of electric motors, a cable drive transmission
and mechanical differentials to realize the desired relationship
between motors’ fibreglass springs and leg joints. Unlike the
former two legs, the stiffness of the ‘ECD’ leg is adjusted by
modifying the physically large fibreglass springs via software
during the toe’s ground contact time instead of mechanism. The
novelty of the design lies in that the actuated DOF of each leg
does not correspond to the knee and the hip angles. Instead, the
angle and shape (or length) of the virtual leg consisting of the
line connecting the hip to the toe are controlled by two motors
respectively (see figure 16(b)). The large fibreglass springs in
‘ECD’ play an important role in isolating the reflected rotor
inertia of the leg-shape motors from the impact forces at leg
touchdown and storing energy in the compression phase of a
running gait [71, 72].
A time-invariant feedback controller, which takes
advantages of the active force control within the compliant
hybrid zero dynamics as well as the natural compliance
of the open-loop system, was implemented on ‘MABEL’.
Experiments with kneed-biped ‘MABEL’ demonstrated that
a sustained walking speed of 1.5 m s−1 can be achieved
with robustness under perturbations [73]. For running, a speed
record of 3.06 m s−1 has been realized by varying its effective
leg stiffness [74].
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001 Topical Review

Figure 16. (a) Experimental setup of ‘MABEL’ and (b) its power train (same for each leg) [73] (courtesy of Koushil Sreenath, Control
Systems Laboratory, University of Michigan).

4.4. Sprawl family of robots (Sprawlita and iSprawl)

The Sprawl family of hexapod running robots takes design
inspirations from the self-stabilizing properties of cockroaches
and features one active thruster and one entirely passive
compliant rotary joint on each leg. Biomechanical studies
on cockroaches have revealed that a sprawled posture, a
bouncing alternating tripod gait, passive compliance and
tuned damping in their musculoskeletal system enable an
instantaneous or ‘preflex’ response to disturbances and thus
allow rapid response to the large perturbations experienced
when confronted with irregular terrains [14, 75–77]. Like
cockroaches, the foregoing properties are all taken into account
in the mechanical design of this Sprawl family of robots.
‘Sprawlita’ is an earlier version of the family (see
figure 17), and its each leg consists of two active DOFs (a
prismatic joint and a rotary joint) and a passively compliant hip
joint. The thrusting force is performed by a pneumatic piston
while servo motors are utilized to orient the hips with respect
to the body in order to set equilibrium angle about which
the leg will rotate. It is most noticeable that the bio-inspired
passive compliant and damped rotary hip joint is fabricated as Figure 17. Photograph of ‘Sprawlita’ [22] (courtesy of Mark
a flexure of soft viscoelastic polymer urethane embedded in a Cutkosky, Centre for Design Research, Stanford University).
leg structure of stiffer plastic [60]. The angle can be adjusted to
determine whether the thrusting legs accelerate or decelerate and rotational compliance independently. However, this leg
the body. Experiment with ‘Sprawlita’ showed that a maximum produced slower running due to its improper stiffness [78]. In
running speed of 0.7 m s−1 (approximately or 4.5 BL s−1) can addition, a compliant pantograph mechanism (see figure 19)
be achieved by exploiting its passive properties in combination was attached to the hind legs of ‘Sprawlita’ in order to increase
with an open-loop controller. Moreover, the robot is capable its stroke length, as the experiments demonstrated that there
of surmounting hip-height obstacles and uphill slopes of up to is a short phase in which the rear legs appear to drag on the
24◦ [22]. ground because they run out of stroke length [22].
It should be noted that much effort had been made to It is noteworthy that the most significant feature of
improve the performances of ‘Sprawlita’ by redesigning its the fabrication for ‘Sprawlita’ is that the shape deposition
legs. For instance, the spatial four-bar compliant mechanism manufacturing (SDM), a layered-manufacturing technology,
(see figure 18) was introduced into its leg design in order has been adopted [60]. This method allows the mechanisms to
to control the axial compliance in series with the piston achieve local variations in structural compliance and damping

12
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 18. Sprawlita’s leg with spatial four-bar compliant
mechanism [78] (courtesy of Jonathan Clark, Stanford University).
Figure 19. Multi-material prototype leg extension mechanism [22]
(courtesy of Mark Cutkosky, Centre for Design Research, Stanford
University).
and to embed components such as sensors and actuators for
increased ruggedness. The resulting leg structures have proven
to be robust and undergone over a million cycles without
failure.
In spite of Sprawlita’s remarkable dynamic performances,
the use of pneumatic pistons for propulsion virtually preclude
Figure 20. (a) ‘iSprawl’ and (b) its leg compression spring and flexure joint [23] (courtesy of Sangbae Kim, Centre for Design Research,
Stanford University).
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Topical Review
Figure 21. (a) ‘DASH’ and (b) its alternative compliant legs [20]
(courtesy of Paul Birkmeyer, Biomimetic Millisystem Lab,
University of California, Berkeley).
autonomous operation. Accordingly, an independent version
named ‘iSprawl’ (see figure 20(a)), which makes use of a
single electric motor to actuate all the compliant legs, is
developed. A double slider–crank mechanism is used to store
and convert the rotational energy from the motor to legs’
linear oscillations. The cables are able to thrust as well as pull
using flexible cables in low-friction sleeves and adding rigid
elements to both ends of the shaft and tube. More importantly,
the legs are made springy as a result of the rubber tube
springs incorporated into the power transmission system (see
figure 20(b)).
All the above-mentioned characteristics enable ‘iSprawl’
to run autonomously at speeds of over 15 BL s−1 (2.3 m s−1).
For the preferred running speeds of ‘iSprawl’ (between 1.25
and 2.5 m s−1), the specific resistance is nearly constant at
1.75. Furthermore, the trajectory of the COM and the ground
reaction forces for ‘iSprawl’ showed that it achieves a stable,
bouncing locomotion similar to that seen in insects and in
previous slower bio-inspired robots, but with an unusually
high stride frequency for its size [23].
4.5. DASH and its variations
DASH (figure 21(a)) is a 16 g hexapedal robot made of
compliant fibre board materials using the smart composite
microstructure (SCM) process [20, 79]. Due to the
implementation of this new fabrication method, compliant
mechanism, in particular, flexural joints can be incorporated
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Figure 22. The third generation Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot
[58] (courtesy of Robert J Wood et al, Harvard Microrobotics
Laboratory).
into the transmission mechanisms and thus enable the robot
unexpectedly light. The robot makes use of stiff linkages and
polymer hinge elements to transfer power from the motor to
the legs. The ingenious kinematic design of the hip joints and
differential transmission mechanism allow that one motor is
enough for the whole robot’s actuation to realize an alternating
tripod gait similar to those found often in insects, especially
the cockroach. In addition, compliant joints are introduced
into the compliant leg of ‘DASH’ as shown in illustrated
figure 21(b) [20].
Experimental investigations demonstrate that ‘DASH’ is
capable of running at 15 BL s−1 (1.5 m s−1), and the COM
follows a roughly sinusoidal trajectory which is similar to
those seen in running animals. Furthermore, the robot can still
operate safe and sound after being dropped from large heights
(as high as 28 m). For this reason, the robot can be utilized
where there are risks of falls. All characteristics exhibited by
‘DASH’ should be attributed to the lightweight construction,
low density, distributed compliance throughout the body of the
robot. More recently, wings were added to ‘DASH’ in order
to increase its locomotion capabilities. Experiments showed
that the addition of flapping wings increased the maximum
horizontal running speed from 0.68 to 1.29 m s−1, and also
Figure 23. (a) The centipede-inspired millirobot and (b) a top view of its actual backbone consisting of Sarrus linkage [59] (courtesy of
Robert J Wood and Katie Hoffman, Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory).
14
Topical Review
increased the maximum incline angle of ascent from 5.6◦ to
16.9◦ [80].
4.6. HAMR3 and centipede-inspired millirobot
Based on SCM fabrication technologies, the Harvard
Ambulatory MicroRobot (HAMR3, figure 22) has been created
by Wood et al [58]. It is a 1.7 g, 4.7 cm long, autonomous
hexapod robot which features six flexure-based spherical five-
bar mechanisms driven by high energy density piezoelectric
actuators. Experiments showed that the robot has achieved
autonomous ambulation using an alternating tripod gait at
speeds up to 0.9 BL s−1, making this the smallest and lightest
hexapod robot capable of autonomous locomotion.
Almost contemporaneously, Wood et al designed
segmented myriapod millirobots (see figure 23) by taking
inspirations from centipedes [59, 81]. The most distinctive
feature of the robot lies in the flexible backbone that was
introduced into the body design. This notional design is
realized by Sarrus linkage fabricated in a pre-compressed
state to allow both extension and compression of the body.
Experiment with a 20-leg centipede millirobot demonstrated
that the undulations resulting from passive intersegmental
connections can increase the average speed of straight-line
locomotion.
In addition to the compliant legged robots presented
above, several other novel ones have been developed most
recently. For instance, a four-footed biologically inspired
articulated legged robot named ‘Cheetah’ had been developed
by Boston Dynamics. It is reported that the robot gallops at
8.05 m s−1 and sets a land speed record for legged robots [33].
The high running speed is largely due to the articulated back
that flexes back and forth on each step by taking advantage of
compliant elements, much like the elastic structures in the back
of some mammals and their role in galloping. Other details
cannot be documented here due to the scarcity of publications
about this robot. Simultaneously, a similar cheetah-inspired
quadruped robot is under construction by MIT Biomimetic
Robotics Lab [82]. Along with compliant articulated legs
and actuated flexible spine, a balancing tail will be added
to the robot in pursuit of achieving highly dynamic behaviours
such as jump, galloping and trotting gaits. The main major
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
Table 1. Characteristicsof the compliant elements for each category.
Specific energy storage
Category capacity (kJ kg–1) [85] Compliance distribution
I 240a Single-directional
II 0.14b Single-directional
III 1c Multi-directional
a
Compressed gas.
b
Steel in tension.
c
Fibreglass in tension.
challenges in constructing this robot include the selection of
high torque density actuators, lightweight and robust structure,
hierarchical control architecture, etc [83, 84].
5. Discussion
As mentioned above, the elastic properties in running animals
can be implemented in compliant legged robots by taking
advantage of compressed air, coil springs and as compliant
mechanisms. Determining which form to be used for a specific
robot depends on the given task, such as the size, payload,
energy source, speed requirement, etc. The characteristics of
each type of compliant element are shown in table 1 from
which the trade-off between each individual class can be
concluded in the following paragraphs.
• Compressed air has the highest specific energy storage
capacity amongst all the three categories [85]. Compliant
legs that make use of air spring or PAMs to store energy
have demonstrated strong thrust. For instance, Raibert’s
Planar Biped can run as fast as 5.9 m s−1 [86]. The
biped ‘Mowgli’ can hop 0.5 m high [38]. Furthermore,
the stiffness of the compliant legs with compressed
air can be adjusted conveniently. The bipedal ‘Lucy’
is a good example of exploiting its natural dynamics
through this method [87]. On the other hand, a usable
gas spring is often obtained at the expense of more
complicated systems. For example, the 3D one-legged
hopping machine is composed of cylinder, piston, pumps,
piping, servo valves or other comparable hardware, which
are likely to be bulky [19]. Meanwhile, seal frictional,
leakage and thermodynamic losses degrade the resilience
of the air springs. All these factors lead to particular energy
inefficiency of the whole system with a high specific
resistance of 5 summarized in table 2. The same is true
for the PAMs [30]. Furthermore, powering the robot with
air pressure requires that the robot carry a large air storage
tank and a compressor, or be tethered which actually
precludes the self-contained locomotion [37, 38].
• Coil springs are the most available compliant elements
that can be employed to mimic the elastic functions of
tendons and muscles in running animals. The compliance
of the coil springs in its functional directions can
be designed accurately as desirable while stiff enough
in other directions. Consequently, they are widely
adopted by robots from centimetre- to meter-scale,
including ‘Grillo’, ‘Scout II’, ‘BigDog’, etc [32, 41, 55].
Furthermore, the dynamic characteristics of these kinds of
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Topical Review
Main application
Autonomy Mechanical complexity (robots’ scale)
No High Metre-
Yes Moderate Decimetre- or metre-
Yes Low Centimetre-
compliant legged robots can be modelled easily and thus
a more appropriate control strategy can be implemented
on these robots such as ARL Monopod and ‘Scout II’
[27, 41]. However, they cannot meet the need of bearing
loads in multiple directions especially when the impact
between the robots and ground happens during the stance
phase of gait cycles. In addition, tuneable stiffness cannot
be achieved unless complex mechanisms are added.
• Compliant mechanisms, including the single leaf springs,
flexural joints and other complex mechanisms composed
of compliant joints and rigid links, have several merits
in comparison with the previous two categories. Firstly,
the compliant legs can be made lightweight while having
high energy storage capacity and resilience. For instance,
the ‘Bow Leg Hopper’ with a weight of 100 g can
store about 100 J of elastic energy which is sufficient
to lift the leg approximately 100 m in earth gravity [56].
Secondly, the resulting legs as well as the body of the
robots can be fabricated and customized by means of
new integrative manufacturing techniques such as SDM
or SCM, etc [60, 79]. Due to this reason, they are
extensively implemented on bio-inspired running robots,
particularly the centimetre- and millimetre-scale robots
such as ‘Sprawlita’, ‘iSprawl’, ‘DASH’, ‘HAMR3’, etc
[20, 22, 23, 58]. Thirdly, the distributed compliance allows
functional compliance in multi-directions to be obtained
without adding complexity of the system. RHex-like
robots are good examples of applying this principle [88].
However, compliant mechanisms might be unsuitable
for larger scale or high payload robots. In addition,
an accurate dynamic model is difficult to establish for
these robots unless substantial assumptions have been
made.
To date, a large number of compliant legged robots are
constructed by taking inspiration from running animals,
particularly the functions of elastic tendons distributed in their
legs, the backs and other parts in their bodies. The structural
characteristics and dynamic performances of the most above-
mentioned compliant legged robots are summarized in table 2.
Several conclusions can be reached from the point of view of
running speed, energy efficiency, as well as the design features
of these robots.
As shown in table 2, the Froude number and specific
resistance might be a good option for comparing the speed and
energy efficiency of these compliant legged robots. It can be
seen from table 2 that ‘DASH’ has the highest Froude number
while having a medium specific resistance. This is attributed to
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001 Topical Review

Table 2. Structural characteristics and performances of the compliant legged robots.

Variable Spine Leg Specific
Robot Leg category compliance compliance Cable drives length (m) Froude number resistance
Quadruped running machine I Yes No No 0.66 1.1 5
Monopod II II No No Yes 0.64 0.5 0.22
Kenken II No No No 0.52 0.7 24.9
Scout II II No No No 0.323 0.7 1.4
KOLT II/I Yes No Yes 0.61 0.5 1.18
Bow Leg Hopper III No No Yes 0.25 0.6 0.06
RHex III No No No 0.175 2.1 0.6
EduBot III Yes No No 0.117 2.3 0.51
Canid III No Yes Yes 0.195 0.8 –
MABEL III Yes No Yes 1 1 –
iSprawl III No No Yes 0.15 1.9 1.75
DASH III No No No 0.03a 2.8 1.36
Centipede millirobot III No Yes No 0.01 0.2 –
a
Approximated based on the photograph of the robot.

the light body-weight composed of compliant mechanisms and
high power density [20]. It also shows that the ‘EduBot’ and
‘RHex’ also have higher speed and energy efficiency owing
to their compliant and robust C-shaped legs with distributed
compliance [64, 89]. The highest energy efficiency of the ‘Bow
Leg Hopper’ results from its compliant fibreglass spring with
high resilience while that of ‘Monopod II’ depends on the hip
spring and leg spring [27, 56]. The robots which make use
of hydraulic power usually have lower energy efficiency, such
as the quadruped running machine and ‘Kenken’ due to the
complexity of their mechanical structures [46, 86].
It might be difficult to compare their ability from the
point of view of shock absorption using a unified quantitative
parameter like the ones used to measure that of their speed and
energy efficiency. However, the important role the compliant
elements play in this aspect certainly cannot be neglected.
For instance, experiments showed that ‘DASH’ can survive
falling onto concrete at approximately 10.3 m s−1 just prior
to impact due to uniquely compliant nature of its structure
[20]. The tendon–bone co-location architectures applied to
radius and foot of the biological leg design of the MIT Robotic
Cheetah have an added benefit of damping against shock loads
to mitigate the large dynamic loads, and thus the resulting
stress on the bone can be reduced by up to 59% [84]. Another
paradigm is that the elasticity introduced into the SEA design
of ‘Spring Flamingo’ can improve shock tolerance greatly [53].
Although significant differences exist amongst the
mechanical design of a variety of compliant legged robots,
several conclusions can be made and listed as follows
according to table 2.
• The application of compliant mechanisms has been a trend
in novel compliant legged robot designs, in particular,
the centimetre- and millimetre-scale robots whose
fabrications are inherently difficult with conventional
technologies such as continuous revolute joints, bearings
and motors. Examples of successful combinations of
bio-inspired robots and compliant mechanisms are the
‘Bow Leg Hopper’, ‘iSprawl’, ‘DASH’ and ‘HAMR3’,
etc [20, 23, 29, 58]. Regardless of the different
numbers of their legs and dimensions, these robots all
employ compliant materials or flexible joints, either
in their legs or whole bodies. More importantly, the
resulting robots can operate over uncertain terrain without
complicated control strategies and achieve remarkable
speed, energy efficiency and robustness largely due to
the compliance distributed in their legs [20, 23, 24, 80].
Since animals are commonly integrated as bones, muscles,
tendons, complex nervous system and other tissues, it
is extremely difficult to duplicate them with traditional
actuators or transmission mechanisms. However, by
taking advantage of advanced design and manufacturing
methods, functional compliant mechanisms can be
fabricated without fasteners and connectors. Moreover,
the robots will be made lightweight.
• Legs with variable compliance will become a focus in
running robotic designs attributing to its important role in
improving energy efficiency, passive stability and terrain
adaptability as well as minimizing the power output.
Studies in both biomechanics and robotics have revealed
that tuned resonant running is necessary to realize an
energy efficient agile, stable and robust locomotion [13].
McMahon et al verified that at high forward speed,
the stiffness of the leg is a nearly linear function of
both horizontal and vertical Froude number in order to
maintain a periodical spring–mass motion [90]. Research
carried out by Geyer et al suggested that a proper
adjustment of leg stiffness contributes to mechanically
self-stabilized running [18]. Experiments with human
runners in different surface stiffness provide insight into
the design of hopping and running robots and reveal
that incorporating adjustable leg stiffness is important
if they are to match the agility and speed of animals
on varied terrain [15]. From table 2, it can be seen that
this principle has been applied to robotic leg design. For
instance, Raibert et al have made the ‘Planar Biped’ run
faster by increasing the air pressure (leg stiffness) in
the legs [35]. The compliance of a one-DOF pendulum
actuated by an antagonistic pair of PPAMs is adjusted
to exploit the natural dynamics, and both the simulations
and measurements showed that the energy consumption
can be significantly reduced without harming tracking
precision [37]; Hurst’s experiments with ‘BiMASC’ and

16
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
‘ECD’ showed that too soft or too stiff springs both lead to
energy inefficiency for legged locomotion [70]; the most
recent experimental studies with hexapod ‘EduBot’ also
demonstrated that the speed and efficiency of the robot
can be optimized by the passive variable compliance leg
according to different surface stiffness and payloads [16].
• Compliant spine as well as hip compliance has been
a growing practice for highly dynamic robot design
due to their important roles in realizing high speed,
robustness, mobility and reducing power requirements.
Highly dynamic running cannot be achieved without
the cooperation between legs, bodies, heads and even
tails. Hildebrand investigated the motions of the running
cheetah and horse and found that flexion and extension
of the back on the animals play an important role in
increasing their speed [91]. Alexander et al studied the
galloping gait of fallow deer and dogs and found that
galloping is the most economical gait for high speeds due
to the aponeurosis in their backs and fascia lata in the hip
joints for storing and recovering elastic strain energy [92].
Hackert’s work with the pikas indicated that flexion of the
spine causes a change in the trunk’s mass distribution
aiding in the body’s self-stabilization and thus contributes
to the robustness [93]. These bio-inspired principles have
been implemented to their counterparts in running robots
such as ‘Cheetah’, ‘Canid’, ‘Monopod II’, etc and thus
lead to their impressive performances [33, 59, 69].
• Cable drives have received significant attention in the
leg design of highly dynamic robots. For small robots
with lower payload, compliant mechanisms might be
suitable for achieving a light weight. However, cable
drives may be more appropriate for relatively lager
robots than compliant mechanisms. For instance, the
robots such as ‘KOLT’, ‘Bow Leg Hopper’, ‘iSprawl’,
‘Canid’, etc all take advantage of cable drive transmissions
[23, 52, 56], which allows the leg inertia to be minimized,
in contrast to gear reducers, by locating the actuators
on the robotic bodies. In addition, springy elements can
be incorporated into the cable driving systems to obtain
muscle-like properties.
Objectively speaking, some of the robots listed above
exhibit impressive performance to a certain extent. However,
the performances of the existing compliant legged robots are
far more primitive than that of their counterparts in nature.
There are various factors that restrict the development of these
robots. Some of the challenges can be concluded as follows.
• Bionic principle and engineering implementation. A
successful robot is usually the result of close collaboration
between biologists, roboticists and manufacturing
engineers. One of the most challenging problems in
studying animals’ locomotion is to determine how each
individual component works, because animals have a
sophisticated high DOF musculoskeletal system evolved
over millions of years. Accordingly, a single component
of an animal may serve for multiple functions while one
special function may result from multiple components.
Nevertheless, roboticists may just investigate animals
17
Topical Review
to achieve a particular function and implement it in
the design of the robots. As a consequence, the result
may be ineffective and mislead engineers. For instance,
biomechanical studies have revealed that the high speed
of running animals is attributed to elastic elements in the
back (spine) as well as those distributed in their legs [92].
However, few roboticists have implemented compliance
in the backs of robots; most designers instead pay more
attention to leg compliance by applying the pogo stick
principle to running robots [19]. The important role of
spine compliance has, though, been realized recently and
implemented on the robotic ‘Cheetah’ in order to achieve
the goals of high running speed [33]. In addition, another
hypothesis drawn from cheetahs is that an active tail not
only helps to reject disturbances in steady state running but
also improves agility in changing direction [83]. Unless
the fundamental principles of effective animal locomotion
are distilled and appropriately applied to the robot design,
a successful robot cannot be constructed.
• The power density of the traditional actuators. In
animal bodies, the tendons incorporate with muscle while
the muscle usually is functionally replaced by electric
motors, hydraulic actuators, pneumatic actuators or even
piezoelectric actuators for robots. Although the compliant
elements can be used as power amplifiers, the resulting
performance of a robot is determined by the actuators
to a certain extent. Nevertheless, the power density of
conventional gear motors is much lower than that of
biological muscles and thus actuators with higher power
density are urgent [83].
• Manufacture technologies and novel materials. As stated
above, manufacturing methods such as SDM and SCM
allow stiff and compliant materials, as well as actuators,
sensors, fabrics, fibres and other composite materials, to
be integrated in a single structure [60, 79]. This is an
effective way to emulate some of the characteristics found
in animals, and has facilitated the recent success in the
development of ambulatory robots such as ‘Sprawlita’,
‘DASH’, etc [20, 22]. However, it is impractical
to attempt a direct mapping between morphologies,
actuators or control schemes since the tools biology
uses to build systems are fundamentally different than
those used by engineers. Current challenges include
extending this approach to the structures of the scales
with microscopic and macroscopic features. In addition,
running robots have to suffer from the foot–ground-impact
loads imposed by highly dynamic behaviours; thus the
manufactured components needed to be both light in
weight to facilitate ease of movement and strong enough
to withstand the forces from shifting weight during
running [84]. Accordingly, compliant legged robots call
for advancements in manufacturing techniques and the
appearance of novel biomimetic materials that have
properties comparable to bones and tendons.
• The dynamic modelling of the compliant legged robots. An
exact dynamic model is crucial to describe the physical
behaviour and the controller design of these robots aside
from the factors associated with design issues. Since a
Bioinspir. Biomim. 7 (2012) 041001
robot is a unified dynamic system comprising electronics,
software and mechanical components, it is challenging to
establish an accurate model for these robots, especially
for the ones consisting of compliant elements. As far
as we know, the state-of-the-art in dynamic modelling
for the running motion is basically characterized by the
SLIP model [18, 94], in which the mass of the legs and
the body attitude are often neglected. Furthermore, the
ground reaction force, by which the robots are propelled,
is assumed to be proportional to the magnitude of spring
deflection and to direct along the axis of the spring.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of contact mechanics,
the ground force is actually closely related to the elastic
indentations of the contact region. Additionally, legged
robots are multi-body systems, and thus the dynamics of
the system is more complex, in particular when compliant
elements are introduced into the robot design [33, 69],
because the impact, during which a large amount of
energy will be lost due to vibrations and damping as
well as friction, will happen as long as the running robots
move [95]. Consequently, a completely passive dynamic
running is impossible although the understanding of the
dynamics of these robots is necessary to exploit their
natural dynamics. Additionally, the distribution of the
leg compliance such as the direction and position has
significant influence on the dynamic characteristics of the
robot.
6. Conclusion
Biological studies on running animals have provided great
insight into the design of compliant legged robots that have
several advantages over rigid legged ones in certain aspects.
Accordingly, these robots have potential applications in
scenarios such as search and rescue, de-mining, environmental
monitoring, planetary exploration, etc and thus have received
significant attention in the field of dynamic stable robots since
the 1980s. In spite of the differences in physical structures
and purposes, they share a common theme in that mechanical
springs have been implemented on them with a certain form.
This review attempts to map a significant number of published
bio-inspired compliant legged robots by grouping them into
three categories: compliant legs with (1) compressed air, (2)
coil springs and (3) compliant mechanisms, although it cannot
cover all of them. In each of these categories, the mechanical
structures and features of several typical robots are presented
in detail.
Based on the investigations of the most published
compliant legged robots, the trade-offs between each kind
of compliant element are summarized. In addition, the
most important performances of these robots are compared
quantitatively. Great importance for robot design should
be attached to the following aspects aiming at increasing
their performances: firstly, compliant mechanisms will be
extensively applied in the running robot design, especially
in the centimetre- and millimetre-scale ones. Secondly, legs
with passive variable compliance will become a focus in the
18
Topical Review
running robotic design. Thirdly, compliant spines might be
widely incorporated into the robot design in order to coordinate
with compliant legs, tails or even heads. Fourthly, novel
manufacturing and material technologies will be exploited to
realize muscle- or tendon-like properties. Finally, an actuator
with high power density and cable driving will be adopted in
lieu of a conventional gear reducer to reduce legs’ inertia as
well as improve efficiency.
The challenges for the compliant legged robot design
can be concluded as follows: (1) divergence inevitably exists
between the bionic principles underlying animals’ locomotion
and their implementation on legged robots; (2) conventional
actuation systems place severe limits on robots’ performance,
in contrast to the muscle systems employed by living creatures;
(3) current manufacturing and material technologies also
restrict the fabrication of the robots; and (4) the controller
design for highly dynamic locomotion is challenging due
to the complex dynamic modelling of the running robots.
In summary, the gap between bio-inspired compliant legged
robots and running animals will be bridged along with the
advancement in the above-listed technologies.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (grant no 50975007), the
Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (grant
no 20091102110023), and the China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation funded projects (grant no 2012T50030 and
2012M520137).
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