Ghost Robotics, one of our customers, has been in the news lately because of their Ghost Minitaur robot. What makes this robot special? It's the first first direct-drive, legged robot, and it's available for purchase!
Gavin Kenneally of Ghost Robotics told a little bit more about the Ghost Minitaur via e-mail:
The motors have custom motor drivers and a microcontroller to control them. The legs each work in a plane (2 degrees of freedom), but the body has a sprawl angle, so the left/right pair are not in the same plane.
There are lots of gaits that it can do, and this is ongoing work. So far, bound, pronk, trot, and crawl are possible.
You can see some of the details of the robot below, including waterjet cut parts from Big Blue Saw.
It can even open doors despite its small size.
The video shows more of Ghost Minitaur doing a variety of other tricks like jumping and climbing a fence!