Legged Mobile Manipulator (Quadruped with Arm)

足式移动操作机器人（带臂四足）Advanced

A quadruped robot with a robot arm mounted on its back, combining rough-terrain walking with manipulation.

This category mounts a robot arm on top of a quadruped robot, so it can open doors, press buttons, or pick things up wherever it walks. Well-known examples include Boston Dynamics' Spot fitted with the Spot Arm, ANYbotics' ANYmal with an arm attached, and Unitree quadrupeds paired with a Z1 arm. Compared with a wheeled mobile manipulator, this design can climb stairs and cross rubble; the difficulty is that as soon as the arm moves, it shifts the robot's center of mass and the forces on its body, so the arm and all four legs have to be controlled together, or the robot can become unstable or miss its target. For that reason, research in this area often uses whole-body control or reinforcement learning to treat the legs and arm as one coordinated system — work like UMI on Legs was done on exactly this kind of platform.

ExampleA Spot with an arm attached walks into a factory, opens a valve and a door by itself, and continues on its inspection route.

Also called: Quadruped with Arm, Arm-Equipped Quadruped, Robot Dog with Arm
Related: Quadruped Robot · Mobile Manipulation · Loco-manipulation · Whole-Body Control · UMI on Legs · Boston Dynamics Spot
Sources: Unitree Robotics Launches Z1 Robot Arm
Unitree quadruped robots get a helping hand - New Atlas