Publication
Evaluation of an Actuated Spine in Agile Quadruped Locomotion
Nico Bohlinger; Piotr Kicki; Davide Tateo; Krzysztof Walas; Jan Peters
In: Computing Research Repository eprint Journal (CoRR), Vol. abs/2605.07988, Pages 1-3, arXiv, 2026.
Abstract
The spine plays a crucial role in the dynamic
locomotion of quadrupedal animals, improving the stability,
speed, and efficiency of their gait, especially for fast-paced
and highly agile movements [1], [2]. Therefore, the spine is
also a promising and natural way to extend the capabilities of
quadruped robots [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. This paper empirically
investigates the benefits of an actuated spine for learning agile
quadruped locomotion. We evaluate whether the use of the spine
brings benefits in terms of high-speed running, climbing stairs,
climbing high-angle slopes, hurdling, and crawling scenarios.
We conducted an empirical study in MuJoCo simulation using
the Silver Badger robot from MAB Robotics with an actuated
1-DOF spine in the sagittal plane. The obtained results show
that the use of the spine provides the robot with increased
agility and allows it to overcome higher stairs, steeper slopes,
higher obstacles, and smaller passages.