Stanford Doggo: An Open-Source, Quasi-Direct-Drive Quadruped

TL;DR

Stanford Doggo is an open-source quadruped robot with a quasi-direct-drive design that achieves high agility, matching or surpassing state-of-the-art robots and animals in vertical jumping, while being affordable and easy to build.

Contribution

This paper introduces Stanford Doggo, a low-cost, open-source quadruped robot with a novel quasi-direct-drive architecture enabling high agility and easy replication.

Findings

Matches best animal vertical speed in jumping

Surpasses previous robot in vertical jumping by 22%

Cost less than $3000 and easy to assemble

Abstract

This paper presents Stanford Doggo, a quasi-direct-drive quadruped capable of dynamic locomotion. This robot matches or exceeds common performance metrics of state-of-the-art legged robots. In terms of vertical jumping agility, a measure of average vertical speed, Stanford Doggo matches the best performing animal and surpasses the previous best robot by 22%. An overall design architecture is presented with focus on our quasi-direct-drive design methodology. The hardware and software to replicate this robot is open-source, requires only hand tools for manufacturing and assembly, and costs less than $3000.