The custom modification is printed on a 3D printer designed to allow nearly any quadrupedal robot to walk on two legs with minimal modification. The extenders are attached to the two legs of the robot and allow the robot to balance on them with its full weight.

The video shows how the amplifiers allow the tiny four-legged robot to take its shaky first steps.

A four-legged robot dog walks on two legs: watch the video

Bipedal robots usually have more degrees of freedom in their limbs, resulting in more dynamic and adaptive movement, but in our case we focused on the multimodal direction to make the robots more stable, faster and more maneuverable.
WPI researcher Andre Rosendo said.

Why can it be so useful?

Thanks to the robot’s ability to stand up, the researchers obtained some preliminary results for climbing higher than the robot’s center of gravity. After mechanical changes in the forelimbs, engineers can better understand complex manipulations that require simultaneous use of both hands, rarely seen in modern mobile robots.

Expanding the capabilities of quadrupedal robots in this way might seem very beneficial. It will definitely add potential use cases for the robot that were not previously planned by manufacturers.