The US Army spent millions developing giant, six-legged walking trucks in 1980s
Oh, that thing. Back when I was into legged locomotion, I found out more about that machine than I ever wanted to know.<p>The designer was really into four-bar linkages. The leg mechanism is set up so that one actuator moves the leg in X, one in Y, and one in Z, with a four-bar linkage encoding that into the leg position. This simplifies the control problem, while complicating the mechanics. I suspect they wanted to be able to get the thing home by manual control of the actuators if the computers crashed. It's not towable; you'd need a crane and a flatbed.<p>It could only walk on flat ground. It was supposed to be able to cross a ditch, but that was manual. The driver had to drive it up to the ditch and stop. Then lock five legs, and, using a joystick, move one of the leading legs across the ditch and set it down. Then, with support in place, move the vehicle forward slightly with no leg lifts. Then lock five legs again, and place the second forward leg. Repeat until all six legs had made it across.<p>Cool, but not useful.<p>In the 1990s, a company in Finland got this right.[1] They built a six-legged walking timber harvester. It's impressive. Deere bought the company But it's not better than 8-wheel articulated timber harvesters [2], so it was never produced as a product.<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y</a><p>[2] <a href="https://youtu.be/BwCTDXatIYA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/BwCTDXatIYA</a>