I've been spending a lot of time on the leg design for my new quadruped robot, LocksleyFox. I ended up iterating across a few different versions, but for now I just want to show a short video I made of the first one, which I'm calling leg 1.0.
This leg uses two RobStride motors, the RS00 and the RS02. The RS00 turns the hip, and the RS02 drives the knee. Both motors sit up at the hip, so there's no motor at the knee itself.
Instead, a push rod runs down the thigh to the knee. The knee motor swings a short arm, which pushes and pulls the rod. The rod then turns a matching arm at the knee, kind of like the rods that turn the wheels of a steam train. Keeping the heavy motor up high makes the lower leg lighter, so it can swing faster.
Anyway, I won't get into too many details in this post. Take a look at the video below.
By the way, I also added a new page to the site showing some of the tests I'm using to validate the design. Check out the Quadruped Design Validation page if you're interested.