Gonzalez de Santos, Pablo; Garcia, Elena; Estremera, Joaquin Quadrupedal locomotion. An introduction to the control of four-legged robots. (English) Zbl 1112.93001 London: Springer (ISBN 1-84228-306-X/hbk). xiii, 267 p. (2006). This book is devoted to the imitation of walking by the development of machines with legs, also widely known as legged robots; in other words, mechanical systems that move themselves by using devices that resemble legs. Based on the number of legs the robot has, there are bipeds like humans or birds, quadrupeds like mammals and reptiles, hexapods like insects, and octopods like spiders. Robots with one, three, five, eight or more legs are unusual, but not impossible. This book is focused in particular on quadrupeds walking under static stability, i.e. machines with four legs that exhibit some special features and use specific control algorithms that this book will highlight throughout the following chapters. Nevertheless, mention will inevitably be made of other multi-legged robots (monopods and bipeds will not be considered in this book) and related features when required. The main topics examined in the book are: walking mechanisms and robots, stability in walking robots, generation of periodic gaits, generation on non-periodic gaits, new approaches to stability, kinematics and dynamics, improving leg speed by soft computing techniques, virtual sensors for walking robots, human-machine interfaces, the SILO4 walking robot, simulation software for walking robots, extensive references and a useful index. The book is of high level and it can be of great importance for researchers to expand on legged robot techniques. Reviewer: George S. Stavrakakis (Chania) Cited in 1 Document MSC: 93-01 Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to systems and control theory 93C85 Automated systems (robots, etc.) in control theory 70E60 Robot dynamics and control of rigid bodies 70-01 Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to mechanics of particles and systems Keywords:Quadrupedal locomotion; legged robots; stability; kinematics; dynamics; human-machine interfaces PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{P. Gonzalez de Santos} et al., Quadrupedal locomotion. An introduction to the control of four-legged robots. London: Springer (2006; Zbl 1112.93001)