JSK Lab SPIDAR

JSK Lab (now DRAGON Lab), University of Tokyo (Japan) SPIDAR (1)

Not for saleUniversity research prototype, first described in a 2023 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters paper.

Not for sale (research)Not programmableWalks and flies16 tilting rotorsQuadruped

Not for saleShipping: Not for sale. A research prototype that was never sold.

Remote control: Not possible. Research prototype.

Paper on arXiv (2023) ↗IEEE RA-L paper (DOI) ↗DRAGON Lab, University of Tokyo ↗IEEE Spectrum ↗Crawling and flight control paper (ISRR 2024) ↗

Overview

SPIDAR is a four-legged robot from the University of Tokyo whose eight leg links each carry a pair of ducted rotors that can tilt in any direction. The same thrust helps the leg joints hold up the 15 kg body during walking and lifts the whole robot in flight, so it has no separate body rotors. In the 2023 paper it walked for five gait cycles and then took off straight from its standing pose. Later work added a crawling gait where all four legs lift at once. Like LEONARDO, it uses thrust to help its legs. It remains a lab prototype.

Specifications

Category	Drones · Fly + drive or walk
Released	2023
Country	Japan
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Programmability	No programmability
Built-in autonomy	None / scripted · Moves only when controlled, or plays preset motions
LLM support	None · No built-in LLM and no SDK to connect one.
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Mixed
Audio	No audio
Compute type	NVIDIA Jetson, Arduino / ESP32 / microcontroller
Remote control	Not programmable
Size	15.2 kg. Spans up to 2.7 m with legs spread, each of the eight leg links is 0.54 m long.
Drive	Four legs with two links each. Every link carries a ducted pair of counter-rotating 5-inch brushless rotors (16 rotors in all) on a two-axis vectoring mount turned by Dynamixel XL430 servos. Leg joints use Dynamixel XH430 servos with pulleys. Rotor thrust helps the joints carry the body while walking and lifts the whole robot in flight.
Compute	NVIDIA Jetson TX2, plus the lab's own Spinal flight-control board and Neuron relay boards on each link, linked over CAN.
Vision	None mentioned in the paper
Lidar	None
Sensors	Joint encoders in the servos. In the published tests, body position and attitude came from an external motion-capture system.
Runtime	About 9 min of flight and 20 min of walking on eight 6S 3 Ah LiPo batteries spread across the links.
Speed	Not published
SDK	None public