Publication
Birds have the remarkable ability to travel boundlessly both on the ground and in the air. This unique capability has inspired engineers to develop multimodal robots capable of terrestrial and aerial locomotion for a wider application of robots with multiple operable environments. However, compared to birds, these robots have limited mobility in both terrestrial and aerial modes, as well as in transitioning between the two modes. Especially, transitioning from the ground to the air and maintaining the flight are important functionalities for autonomous operations but remain largely undeveloped in multimodal robots. This thesis presents efforts to narrow the performance gap between birds and multimodal robots by introducing new mechanisms and platforms inspired by bird locomotion. In the first part, we introduce a novel elastic actuation mechanism designed to mimic the explosive and cyclic motions of birds using a single actuator and an elastic element. The second and third parts showcase platforms capable of executing a jumping take-off, a common take-off strategy used by birds. The platform in the second part relies on a single actuator for both jumping and thrust generation, while the platform in the third part uses multifunctional legs that enable walking, hopping, jumping, and leaping into take-off.