Water Surface Walking and Gait Efficiency Analysis of Legged Locomotion Robot Equipped with Floats on Feet

In this paper, a water-surface walking robot with floats at the end of its legs is proposed and its basic motion characteristics are analyzed by numerical simulation. First, a model with floats at the leg ends of the robot is constructed and simulated for stable walking on quiet water. At this point the robot stays on the water surface more using buoyancy. Afterwards, we imitated the movement of a lizard’s feet, which creates a cavity in the water if the impact velocity of the leg tip into the water is large enough, and discussed the effect of the cavity on the robot’s walking.