Mechanisms and its Importance

In the present study, we proposed an extension mechanism of the Theo Jansen linkage for climbing over bumps. The linkage is useful to mimic animal Locomotion, we hypothesized that an additional up-and-down motion in the linkage center provides different motion patterns from the original internal cycle. Our results demonstrated that the lifting up of the linkage center alters the leg's orbit upward and the combination of a cycle and up-down motion provides a new elliptic orbit to climb bumps with about 10 times height of the original. The advantage of the linkage is that the best proportions of link lengths provides a smooth locomotive leg movement like animal gaits with a sharp-pointed elliptic orbit while the disadvantage is less flexibility to change the orbit without any change of link lengths.