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MiNI-Q^2, a miniature quadruped robot, is introduced with mechanically unbounded 2-DOF leg joints to overcome workspace and gait limitations of traditional legged robots. The robot's design enables both oscillatory and rotary locomotion, achieving speeds up to 0.46 m/s and demonstrating diverse maneuvers like stair climbing, jumping, and inverted locomotion. The wire-free architecture enhances reliability at a miniature scale, and all design files are open-sourced.
Unbounded leg joints unlock surprising agility in a miniature quadruped, enabling it to climb stairs, jump, and even walk upside down.
Physical joint limits are common in legged robots and can restrict workspace, constrain gait design, and increase the risk of hardware damage. This paper introduces MiNI-Q^2, a miniature, wire-free quadruped robot with independently actuated, mechanically unbounded 2-DOF leg joints. We present the mechanical design, kinematic analysis, and experimental validation of the proposed robot. The leg mechanism enables both oscillatory gaits and rotary locomotion while allowing the robot to fold to a minimum height of 2.5 cm. Experimentally, MiNI-Q achieves speeds up to 0.46 m/s and demonstrates low-clearance crawling, stair climbing, inverted locomotion, jumping, and backflipping. The wire-free architecture extends our previous Q8bot design, improving assembly reliability at miniature scale. All mechanical and electrical design files are released open source to support reproducibility and further research.
