BigDog Exercise

i) If engineered or programmed badly, BigDog would fall over. Watch the full video again, and describe how BigDog’s legs move while walking– ie. what is the sequence of leg movements for one complete step? Use the terms BL, BR, FL, and FR for the back-left, back-right, front-left and front-right legs. 

BR - FL - BL - FR

ii) Explain how this sequence of movements manages to balance BigDog’s body weight. 

The sequence of movement enables the surface area of the dog to be as large as possible at all times and this makes the centre gravity of the dog balanced. The back leg on the right moves in the direction of the force first to keep the centre of gravity from toppling over. The legs on the outer side (the left in this case) moves away and with the direction of the force to widen up the surface area and thus making it bigger. 

iii) Look at BigDog_kick_slow_motion.mov. Draw a storyboard of BigDog stabilising itself after being kicked. You should draw the key poses. You don’t need to draw well – but you must show the leg positions and the body rotations around the X, Y and Z axes for each key pose.

A playblast of the exercise

Reflections
From this exercise, I understand how weight distribution works, how sequence of movements occur and an understanding of locomotion. The exercise was done in class with the tutor's guide and I thought it was quite meaningful in this module.