Carbon fibre legs help China’s fastest quadruped robot run at a speed of 10 m/s

The overall weight of Black Panther 2.0 is 38 kg and the standing height is 0.63 m. HIC-ZJU claims it is currently the fastest quadruped robot in the world, with a speed of up to 10 m/s.

The R&D team used dynamics as a fulcrum to exploit every inch of the robot’s skeletal design. At the same time, they followed the laws of nature and learned the characteristics of the movement configurations of natural animals such as black panthers and jerboas in the hip joints, knee joints and soles of the feet. With Black Panther 2.0, the strength, toughness, precision, density and smoothness of the black panther’s high-speed movement process are improved in many aspects, allowing the coexistence of small body and large energy.

Behind the speed of Black Panther 2.0 is the team’s breakthrough research on robot dynamics. They made full use of the Huygens synchronised pendulums principle to coordinate its 4 legs into a unified gait, forming a combined force to achieve high-speed sprinting. Secondly, in order to further reduce the ground force at the moment of impact of the robot during high-speed running and reduce the energy consumption of movement, they used springs installed on the knee joints of Black Panther 2.0 as buffers. To prevent the lower leg from inevitably breaking when the Black Panther runs at 6 m/s, they also developed a “jerboa-inspired carbon fibre lower leg,” which increased stiffness by 135% at the cost of only a 16% increase in weight. Finally, they also customised a special running shoe for Black Panther 2.0, imitating the cheetah’s sharp claws, to improve its grip performance by 200%.

Cover photo: HIC-ZJU