See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/280776075

Robots Step Outside

Conference Paper · September 2005

CITATIONS READS
11 1,746

3 authors, including:

Martin Buehler
Walt Disney Imagineering
99 PUBLICATIONS   4,841 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Monopod View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Martin Buehler on 08 August 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Int. Symp. Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines (AMAM), Ilmenau, Germany, Sept 2005.

Robots Step Outside

M. Buehler, R. Playter, and M. Raibert

Boston Dynamics, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA, buehler@BostonDynamics.com

significant payloads, operating outdoors, with static and

Abstract—We describe BigDog, an ongoing project at Boston
Dynamics to develop the world’s most advanced power
autonomous quadruped robot for outdoor applications.
Index Terms—Legged Robot, quadruped, legged locomotion,
field robotics.
I. INTRODUCTION
dynamic mobility, and fully integrated sensing for mobility.
We will start with a description of the robot’s systems in
section II. Section III gives an overview of a locomotion
controller we developed in simulation, and section IV
summarizes some of our experiments.

J UMPING lemurs, load hauling mules, galloping cheetahs,

camouflaged chameleons, climbing mountain goats and
acrobatic squirrels all conjure up highly desirable tasks for
machines in civilian, intelligence, and military applications.
While some animals can be trained to help out better than
others, machines with similar capabilities would be preferred.
New capabilities, not seen in nature would be possible, like a
mule which doubles as a power generator or a water supply.
Since much of animals’ amazing terrestrial mobility is
achieved with legs, this proof of existence motivates the
development of legged robots.
II. ROBOT
BigDog (Fig. 1) was designed to be relevant to human size
in terms of mobility, speed, and load carrying ability. It aims
to jump over a 1 m ditch, climb 45 degree (100 %) slopes, run
at 5 m/s, and carry over 50 kg payload. The current version is
about 1 m tall, 1 m long and 0.3 m wide, and weights about 90
kg. Each of the four legs has four degrees of freedom: one
passive linear pneumatic compliance in the lower leg, one
powered knee joint, and two powered hip joints.

After almost half a century of legged robot research a

tremendous number of walking machines with ever increasing
capabilities have been developed [1, 2]. While most of these
robots are still confined to the laboratory, an increasing
number are able to operate outdoors, carry payloads, and there
is now some evidence (e.g. RHex [3]) of legged machines
with better outdoor mobility than that of a tracked or
articulated tracked machine of similar size and weight. We
have to keep in mind, though, that even when power
autonomy, rugged outdoor operation, and basic mechanical
and dynamic mobility capability were achieved, the full
benefit of legged robots for practical applications will only be
seen once the requisite terrain and environmental sensing,
planning and intelligence are tightly coupled to these
capabilities.

BigDog takes as inspiration and as a point of departure the Figure 1: BigDog

insights and results of the LegLab quadruped [4], and aims to
significantly advance the state of the art towards the creation
of a mechanical mule - a category with few competitors to
date: power autonomous quadrupeds capable of carrying
This work was supported by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) contract N66001-03-C08044 and by Army Contract
W56HZV-04-C-0089. Approved by DARPA for Public Release, DISTAR
Case 5026, Distribution Unlimited.
The heart of BigDog’s power (“DogChow”) is a 17 hp 2
cylinder combustion engine (Fig. 2) which drives a hydraulic
variable displacement pump, providing 3000 PSI system
pressure. This high pressure oil is distributed (Fig. 3) via a
central manifold to the twelve custom hydraulic actuators
(Fig. 4). All joints use the same actuator which is tightly
integrated with its servo valve, piston position potentiometer,
and a load cell. The overall hydraulic system also incorporates
an oil reserve tank, an accumulator, filters, a heat exchanger,
check valve, dump valve, and sensors for oil pressure, flow
and temperature.
Figure 2: DogChow combustion engine, cooling fan, and
hydraulic pump
Figure 3: Hydraulic System
BigDog has about fifty sensors to sense body state (gyros,
accelerometers, oil temperature), its environment (vision,
ambient temperature, etc), and the interactions between robot
and environment (load cells, foot contact switches, vision,
etc), illustrated in Figure 5.
Figure 4: Custom Hydraulic Actuator with Servo Valve,
Load Cell, and Potentiometer
Figure 5: BigDog Sensors
We are integrating a stereo vision system (Fig. 6) developed
by our JPL partner team. It consists of a pair of firewire
cameras mounted on a calibrated stereo bar, a Pentium M
computer assembly, and software. The software performs
stereo vision computations and delivers a depth map as its
output. Algorithms for ground plane estimation and visual
odometry were developed and are being tested on BigDog
during outdoor trials. Currently, 320x240 stereo range images
are computed at 29 frames/s (fps), additional visual odometry
and ground plane estimation at 14 fps. Our short term plans
are to use this system to predict upcoming slopes, identify
large obstacles to be avoided, and to track the robot’s position
via the visual odometry.

Figure 6: Stereo Vision System
A ‘nervous system’ wiring grid connects all the sensors and
actuators to the central electronics box (Fig. 7). It contains a
PC104 Pentium processor running a multi-rate real time
operating system (low level control rates 0.5 – 1 kHz) under
QNX as well as I/O cards and I/O interfaces.
Figure 7: Electronics Box
Operators control BigDog via high level commands like
desired speed, direction, or gait, via an Operator Control Unit
which communicates with the BigDog onboard computer via
standard wireless Ethernet. The OCU displays in real time
selected critical variables, and can log over 1000 variables at
100 Hz.
III. CONTROL
Postural control algorithms coordinate the kinematics and
ground reaction forces of the robot while responding to basic
postural commands. The control distributes load amongst the
legs to optimize their load carrying ability. The vertical
loading across the limbs is kept as equal as possible while
individual legs are encouraged to generate ground reactions
directed toward the hip/shoulder, thus lowering required joint
torques and actuator efforts. The simulated robot stands and
coordinates the motion of its legs and body through any
number of desired paths, such as side-to-side, circular,
pitching, rolling, yawing, etc.
Basic walking control uses the control system diagramed
below. A gait coordination algorithm, responsible for inter-leg
communication initiates leg state transitions to produce
different stable quadruped gaits, two of which are shown
below. A virtual leg model coordinates the legs.
Figure 8: Control Diagram
We developed quadrupedal walking algorithms for inclined
and rough terrain and tested it in dynamic simulation. The
simulated robot walks on inclines and declines ranging from
30 to 60 degrees, it makes transitions from walking on the
level to an incline or decline, and it accommodates unexpected
changes in terrain height caused by irregularities in the terrain,
such as would be caused by rocks (Fig. 9).
The control system adapts to terrain changes through terrain
sensing and posture control. The control system uses
proprioceptive sensory information from load cells and
kinematic sensors in the legs to determine when feet are in
contact with the ground and to determine the load on each leg
and actuator. A posture algorithm controls body position, by
coordinating the kinematics of the legs with the reaction
forces of legs in contact with the ground. The posture
algorithm implements computed leg compliance on uneven
terrain. This approach allows control of body roll, pitch, and
height relative to the ground, thus supplying adaptation to
local terrain without higher level sensing.
This adaptation takes two forms: it adjusts body height and
attitude to conform to the local terrain, and it adjusts footfall
placement to compensate for orientation of the robot body and
ground plane relative to gravity. The control system leans the
quadruped forward while climbing slopes, leans the body
backwards while descending slopes, and leans it sideways
while crossing walking along the contour line. The control
system accommodates shallow to moderate inclines by making
slight adjustments to body posture, while it accommodates
inclines steeper than 45 degrees by also adjusting the walking
gait pattern and using smaller steps. We tested these
locomotion controls in dynamic simulation tests in which the
robot climbs various inclines from 15° through 61°.

Figure 11: Trotting Gait

Figure 9: BigDog Simulation

IV. EXPERIMENTS
Based, in part, on gait control concepts described above, we
have implemented walking and trotting gaits, as well as
standing up and sitting down. Since its creation in the fall of
2004, BigDog has already logged tens of hours of walking,
climbing and running time. It has walked up and down 35
degree inclines (a 25 deg incline shown in Fig. 10), trotted
(Fig. 11) at speeds up to 0.8 m/s and carried over 50 kg of
payload (Fig. 12).

Figure 12: Payload 120 lbs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BigDog is the result of the ingenuity, hard work and talent
of many individuals at Boston Dynamics, and our partners at
Foster-Miller (DogChow), JPL (vision system), and Harvard
University (biology).

REFERENCES
[1] Walking Machine Catalogue, http://www.walking-machines.org/
[2] D. C. Kar: Design of Statically Stable Walking Robot: A Review, J.
Figure 10: Incline Robotic Systems, 20(11):671-686, 2003.
[3] U. Saranli, M. Buehler, and D. E. Koditschek, “RHex: A Simple and
Highly Mobile Hexapod Robot,” Int. J. Robotics Research, Vol. 20, No.
7, pp. 616-631, 2001.
[4] M. H. Raibert, Legged Robots That Balance, MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA, 1986.

View publication stats