M8 the Four-legged Robot

Abstract: In recent times robots are becoming more and more common. They are everywhere. Walking, running, swimming, flying and many of them have much in common with the creatures inhabiting this planet. A lot of it in order to make them appeal more to us, instead of simply being portrayed as stone cold machines. Continuing on the path evolution has laid out before us seems to be a wise decision to make, aspiring to efficiently utilize our knowledge about science and engineering with the vision of improving our future. With the intention to simulate a four legged animal and evaluate the means of interacting with one´s surrounding, a quadruped locomotion system together with two types of sound and voice interacting systems have been assessed. A demonstrator was built to test the real world problems and decide what kind of interacting that is most beneficial. The results indicate that voice commands and speech recognition, rather than sounds from the environment are more practical and robust as a way of interacting with one´s surroundings.