a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
Todd's paper is very readable. See pdf here. Note that although referred to as a "train", Todd appears to have only built one. So the original "train" aspects have been lost. Its interesting to note that "BigDog" does have the concept for a "train", where the lead dog follows its human master, and other 'dogs' …
Read More “1990 – Iron Mule Train – Revisited by D.J. Todd (American)”
Masha being used in some force-feedback experiments. The experiment here to feed a cylinder into an inclined funnel. See Devjanin-Schneider paper here. The above three images show experimentation by Gorinevsky. His paper is available here. Gorinevsky produced a video of the walking machine. After many media transformations, the quality is poor. See here.  The …
Read More “1976 – “Masha” Hexapod – Gurfinkel et al (Soviet)”
Six-legged Walking Machine by Petternella et al. (Instituto di Automatica, Roma, Italia) Mocci, U., M. Petternella and S. Salinari (1973), "Experiments with six-legged walking machines with fixed gait" Vukobratovich M. Shagayuschie roboty i antropomorfnye mehanizmy / M. Vukobratovich. – Moscow : Mir, 1976. – 544p. M.Peternella (Rome, Institute of Automatics) with team of colleagues created the …
Read More “1969-72 – Six-Legged Walking Machine – Mocci, Petternella, Salinari (Italian)”
An entirely different approach by Spartaco Maratori(8) produced his 'Golden Horse' which, in the final analysis, is somewhat similar to Shigley's approach. Maratori based his concept on an analysis of the locomotion of the horse. He studied the way horses walk, trot, and gallop and after carefully cataloging the various leg motions, attempted to duplicate …
Read More “1960c – “Golden Horse” Walking Machine – Maratori – (Italian)”
Although sometimes attributed to Robert Hooke, the invention was Francis Potter's, and when presented to the Royal Society (see transcript of minutes below), they asked Hooke to present drawings and comment on it. Hooke; Robert (1635 – 1703); Natural Philosopher Potter; Francis (1594 -1678) Above image found on Royal Society's web site. Let h. denote …
Read More “1663 – Cart with Legs – Francis Potter / Robert Hooke (British)”