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With the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is increasingly evident that the demands of warfare are changing and the need for innovative mobility systems is growing. In the rough, unstructured terrain that the soldiers encounter, they have reverted to using mules and donkeys to move stealthily and quickly. In light of the growing need for autonomous systems, the Army is looking at the possibility of legged mobility options such as gasoline powered quadrupeds to traverse the off-road terrain. As technology advances, the era of military bipeds may well be in sight. However, current bipedal robotic technology is far too inefficient for battlefield use. Much of this inefficiency stems from actuated control of each limb's motion throughout the entire gait cycle. An alternative approach is to exploit the passive pendular dynamics of legs and legged bodies for energy savings. This paper compares and contrasts fully-actuated walking with passive walking.

The NATO Reference Mobility Model (NRMM)[1] is the primary mobility software used by the US Department of Defense, its contractors and NATO countries to evaluate various metrics of proposed vehicle systems for acquisition. The NRMM is a vehicle mobility performance model developed in the 1970's[2] that combines mobility related technologies into one comprehensive software package designed to predict the physically constrained vehicle and terrain interaction while operating in both on and off road environments. The empirically based relationships within NRMM are measurements taken from actual vehicles run over a variety of terrains and are geared towards vehicles weighing more than 1500 pounds. As the Army focuses on a lighter, faster and more mobile fighting force, standard military vehicles are decreasing in size with many newultra lightweight autonomous systems being designed.