The below video describes a new biologically inspired robot series called Mini-Whegs™. These 8-9 cm long robots can run at sustained speeds of over 10 body lengths per second, and navigate challenging terrain.

Three spoked appendages, called "wheel-legs", combine the speed and simplicity of wheels with the high mobility of legs. The robot can surmount obstacles significantly greater than the radius of the wheel-legs - a difficult feat for wheeled vehicles.

To surmount obstacles of much greater relative magnitude, a version of the robot, dubbed Jumping Mini-Whegs™, has been developed. It can surmount obstacles of 2-3 body lengths high, such as a stair. Based on abstracted biological principles, this small robot combines simplicity, robustness and reliability to provide a desirable combination of speed, mobility and versatility.

Click on the below links or thumbnail to view the movie.

.mov version (40MB)
MPEG-1 version (35MB)
MPEG-4 version (20MB)

Morrey, Jeremy M., Andrew D. Horchler, Nicholas J. Didona, Bram

Lambrecht, Roy E. Ritzmann, and Roger D. Quinn. "Increasing Small Robot Mobiility Via Abstracted Biological Inspiration." Submission to ICRA 2003.

The pictures below are of Mini-Whegs™ 1, which operates similarly to the full-sized Whegs™ robots, but is much smaller.

During walking on flat ground, two of the wheel-legs in phase with each other, but 60 degrees out of phase with the other two, which allows the robot to use a diagonal gait. The robot pictured below is Mini-Whegs™ 1.


Mini-Whegs™ 1

When an obstacle is encountered, passive mechanical compliance allows the front legs to come back into phase with each other, so that they can both be used to pull the robot up and over the obstacle (see picture above right).

After the robot has pulled itself over the obstacle, the front legs fall back into the previous pattern. Mini-Whegs™ 1 has four wheel-legs, so it returns to a diagonal gait.

Mini-Whegs™ 1 is 3 inches long and is capable of moving at up to 10 body lengths/second.

Below are two pictures of Mini-Whegs™ 1 tumbling. Click on either to view larger versions.



There are several movies of Mini-Whegs™ that are available for viewing. Click on any of the thumbnails to view the movies.

There is also a prototype of Mini-Whegs™ that has jumping capabilities. There is one movie of Jumping Mini-Whegs™ 1 in action:

There are several pictures of the mechanism that allows Jumping Mini-Whegs™ 1 to jump:

Mini-Whegs™ can also be carried by a small aircraft. Below are two movies showing successful and unsuccessful tests of a glider carrying Mini-Whegs™. Click on a thumbnail to view the movie.

During these tests, a camera on board the aircraft recorded video. Below are two video clips from the on-board camera. Click on a thumbnail to view the movies.