Optimum Design of a Bipedal Walking Robot

This paper describes the design, fabrication, and testing of “Bigfoot,” a bipedal walking machine designed to optimize speed, cost, and ease of assembly. Bigfoot walks at near-human walking speed (0.24 m/s), can be assembled/disassembled in two hours, and has a programmable, computer-controlled start-up procedure. Design for manufacturing and assembly techniques (DFMA) were used to reduce the final weight of the robot to 12 kg, the number of structural parts to 39 individual pieces held together with 50 fasteners, and the final robot cost to $300.