RHex is an

autonomous In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ow ...

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

design, based on hexapod with compliant legs and one

actuator An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving and controlling a mechanism or system, for example by opening a valve. In simple terms, it is a "mover". An actuator requires a control device (controlled by control signal) a ...

per leg. A number of US universities have participated, with funding grants also coming from

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

. Versions have shown good mobility over a wide range of terrain types at speeds exceeding five body lengths per second (2.7 m/s), climbed slopes exceeding 45 degrees, swims, and climbs stairs.

History

RHex robotic hexapod - D60 Symposium - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - DSC05547

The RHex design comes from a

multidisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

and multi-university

funded effort that applies mathematical techniques from

dynamical systems theory Dynamical systems theory is an area of mathematics used to describe the behavior of complex dynamical systems, usually by employing differential equations or difference equations. When differential equations are employed, the theory is called ' ...

to problems of

animal locomotion Animal locomotion, in ethology, is any of a variety of methods that animal (biology), animals use to move from one place to another. Some modes of locomotion are (initially) self-propelled, e.g., running, swimming, jumping, flying, hopping, soari ...

, and, in turn, seeks inspiration from biology in advancing the

state of the art The state of the art (sometimes cutting edge or leading edge) refers to the highest level of general development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. However, in some contexts it can also refer to a level ...

of robotic systems. "The RHex Hexapedal Robot". http://rhex.org/ The RHex project received $5 million over 5 years from the DARPA CBS/CBBS program in 1998, and an approximate additional $3 million from other

grants Grant or Grants may refer to: Places *Grant County (disambiguation) Australia * Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia United Kingdom *Castle Grant United States * Grant, Alabama *Grant, Inyo County, C ...

, such as

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

grants. The following Universities participated on the initial RHex project: *

The University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, Ann Arbor, MI *

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

, Montreal, Canada *

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, Pittsburgh, PA *

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, Berkeley, CA *

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, Princeton, NJ *

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, Ithaca, NY *

University of Lahore The University of Lahore ( ur, ), abbreviated as UOL, is a private university located in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. It was founded at collegiate level in 1999 under the IBADAT Educational Trust and was granted full degree awarding status in 2002. ...

, pak, LHR by professor Numan Khan

Publications

* A. Greenfield, U. Saranli, and A. A. Rizzi. Solving models of controlled dynamic planar rigid-body systems with frictional contact. International Journal of Robotics Research. 24(11):911-931, 2005. *U. Saranli, A. A. Rizzi, and D. E. Koditschek. Model-based dynamic self-righting maneuvers for a hexapedal robot. International Journal of Robotics Research, 23(9):903-918, September 2004. *R. Altendorfer, N. Moore, H. Komsuoglu, M. Buehler, H. B. Brown Jr., D. McMordie, U. Saranli, R. J. Full, and D. E. Koditschek. RHex: A biologically inspired hexapod runner. Autonomous Robots, 11(3):207-213, 2001. *R. Altendorfer, U. Saranli, H. Komsuoglu, D. E. Koditschek, Jr. H. B. Brown, M. Buehler, N. Moore, D. McMordie, and R Full. Evidence for spring loaded inverted pendulum running in a hexapod robot. In D. Rus and S. Singh, editors, Experimental Robotics VII, Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, chapter 5, pages 291-302. Springer, December 2000. *U. Saranli, A. A. Rizzi, and D. E. Koditschek. Multi-point contact models for dynamic self-righting of a hexapod robot. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR '04), pages 75–90, Utrecht/Zeist, The Netherlands, July 2004. *U. Saranli and D. E. Koditschek. Template based control of hexapedal running. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference On Robotics and Automation, volume 1, pages 1374-1379, Taipei, Taiwan, September 2003. *U. Saranli and D. E. Koditschek. Back flips with a hexapedal robot. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, volume 3, pages 2209-2215, Washington, DC, May 2002. *H. Komsuoglu, D. McMordie, U. Saranli, N. Moore, M. Buehler, and D. E. Koditschek. Proprioception based behavioral advances in a hexapod robot. In International Conference on Robotics and Automation, volume 4, pages 3650-3655, Seoul, Korea, 2001. *M. Buehler, U. Saranli, D. Papadopoulos, and D. E. Koditschek. Dynamic locomotion with four and six legged robots. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines, August 2000. *U. Saranli, M. Buehler, and D. E. Koditschek. Design, modeling and preliminary control of a compliant hexapod robot. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference On Robotics and Automation, volume 3, pages 2589-96, San Francisco, CA, USA, April 2000. *U. Saranli, W. J. Schwind, and D. E. Koditschek. Toward the control of a multi-jointed, monoped runner. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference On Robotics and Automation, volume 3, pages 2676-82, New York, 1998. *M. Buehler. Dynamic Locomotion and Energetics of RHex, a Six-Legged Robot. The Physiologist, 45(4):340, August 2002. *M. Buehler. Dynamic Locomotion with One, Four and Six-Legged Robots. Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, 20(3):15-20, April 2002. *D. Campbell and M. Buehler. Preliminary Bounding Experiments in a Dynamic Hexapod. In Bruno Siciliano and Paolo Dario, editors, Experimental Robotics VIII, p. 612-621, Springer-Verlag, 2003. *N. Neville, M. Buehler. Towards Bipedal Running of a Six Legged Robot. In Proceedings of the 12th Yale Workshop on Adaptive and Learning Systems, May 2003. *D. McMordie, C. Prahacs, M. Buehler. Towards a Dynamic Actuator Model for a Hexapod Robot. In Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). *D. Campbell, M. Buehler. Stair Descent in the Simple Hexapod 'RHex'. In Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). *E. Z. Moore, D. Campbell, F. Grimminger, and M. Buehler. Reliable Stair Climbing in the Simple Hexapod 'RHex'. In Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Vol 3, pp 2222–2227, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., May 11–15, 2002. *M. Buehler. RePaC design and control: Cheap and fast autonomous runners. In Proceedings of the 4th Int. Conf. on Climbing and Walking Robots Karlsruhe, Germany, September 24–26, 2001. *D. McMordie and M. Buehler. Towards Pronking with a Hexapod Robot. In Proceedings of the 4th Int. Conf. on Climbing and Walking Robots Karlsruhe, Germany, September 24–26, 2001. *E.Z. Moore and M. Buehler. Stable Stair Climbing in a Simple Hexapod. In Proceedings of the 4th Int. Conf. on Climbing and Walking Robots Karlsruhe, Germany, September 24–26, 2001. *P.-C. Lin, H. Komsuoglu, D. E. Koditschek. Sensor Data Fusion for Body State Estimation for a Hexapod Robot with Dynamical Gaits. In Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp4744–4749, Barcelona, Spain, April 2005 *S. Skaff, A. Rizzi, H. Choset, P.-C. Lin. A Context-Based State Estimation Technique for Hybrid Systems. In Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp3935–3940, Barcelona, Spain, April 2005 *P.-C. Lin, H. Komsuoglu, D. E. Koditschek. Toward a 6 DOF Body State Estimator for a Hexapod Robot with Dynamical Gaits. In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp2265–2270, Sendai, Japan. September 2004. *P.-C. Lin, H. Komsuoglu, D. E. Koditschek. Legged Odometry from Body Pose in a Hexapod Robot. In IFRR 9th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER), Singapore. June 2004. *P.-C. Lin, H. Komsuoglu, D. E. Koditschek. A Leg Configuration Sensory System for Dynamical Body State Estimates in a Hexapod Robot. In Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp1391–1396, Taipei, Taiwan, September 2003. *S. Skaff, G.A. Kantor, D. Maiwand, and A.A. Rizzi. Inertial navigation and visual line following for a dynamical hexapod robot. In Proc. of 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Vol 2, pp808–1813, October 2003. *J.C. Spagna, D.I. Goldman, P-C. Lin, D.E. Koditschek, & R.J. Full. Distributed mechanical feedback in arthropods and robots simplifies control of rapid running on challenging terrain. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics 2: 9-18. January 2007. {{Robotics Hexapod robots Autonomy Biorobotics Educational robots Robots of the United States 2001 robots