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STriDER, a Three-Legged Walking Robot
Roland Piquepaille writes "In a short article, New Scientist reports that researchers at Virginia Tech University have developed a tripedal experimental robot. With its three legs, this robot, named STriDER — short for 'Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot' — is actually more stable than 2- or 4-legged robots. As said another researcher, 'It's like a biped with a walking stick.' This robot is intended to deploy sensors and cameras in difficult-to-access areas."
It's like flipping an equilateral triangle, it actually only needs the height of the triangle as a width to follow a path. the path it follows, as far as the legs are concerned, is straight. The central body does move in a zig-zag method, but that doesn't matter for navigating tight spaces.
Basically, the directions it travels in are in line with one of it's sides, not in line with the direction one corner is pointing as you were trying to illustrate. Their videos on the article page rather nicely visualized it moving i a straight line.
The main problem I see is that it can't do any turn by a a 60 degree turn. It can travel in 6 directions only... Makes me feel like I'm playing a hex board game...
The full name of the school is "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University." "Virginia Tech" is an official trademark. "Virginia Tech University" draws angry, red-pen-toting alums.
Just thought I'd let you know...