A study of the geometrical aspects, the nonlinear dynamics, and the control design of a six-legged walking machine is presented. Emphasis is placed on the design and control concepts used by nature in six-legged insects, which walk and climb very efficiently over arbitrary irregular surfaces. The non-Cartesian geometry of a living prototype, the walking stick insect, is used. By means of calculating and optimizing the force/torque distribution in living stick insects, biological design principles are evaluated and presented. A suitable control routine based on a small net of three-step-controllers uses simple coordination rules found in nature. It is able to establish stable gate phase characteristics with a few steps.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
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Weidemann et al. (2002) studied this question.