The NORINCO Unmanned Vehicle Research&Development Center was established in June 2014, one of the important research directions is the bionic mobile robot, including the study of theory on bionic mechanism, configuration design and motion control, and developing 4 generation of quadruped robots. The most famous quadruped robot won the first prizes in the bionic group in the Ground Unmanned System Challenge “Crossing Dangerous Obstacles” organized by the Army Equipment Department, both in 2016 and 2018. The research team also achieved the honor of "National Youth Civilization".

In the aspect of coupling mechanism between animal and environment, the coupling mechanism between environment and animal behavior is revealed through terramechanics, the ground support and traction model is established by studding the geometric and mechanical characteristics of typical environment, the static coupling model is established with the analysis of the interaction between the skeleton structure and the ground, the dynamic coupling model is built by researching the gait, space-time, and energy conversion characteristics when the vertebrate is waling, and the evaluation criteria is proposed to quantify the coupling between animal behaviors and the ground.

In the aspect of gait planning and motion control, the control problem on the stability and compliance of the multidegree-of-freedom and non-linear dynamic model is solved by combining the perception of terrain and the ground mechanics information: the gait plan strategy and kinematic model is established based on the method of virtual leg, inverted pendulum, and force feedback, the adjustment strategy of attitude and gait under the different environments is researched considering the large closed-loop behavioral control model combining the information of terrain, and the walking efficiency is optimized based on the force distribution model with multi-contact support.

Based on the theoretical research results above, the developed quadruped robot can walk in complex terrains such as snow, ice, grassland, gravel, and so on. The maximum speed on flat ground can reach to 8 km/h, and the maximum climbing gradient is 30 degrees.

The robot can go up and down single step of 0.2 m, and cross trench 0.3 m wide.