Research on the Locomotion of German Shepherd Dog at Different Speeds and Slopes

Quadruped can take the initiative to adjust their gait for adapting to different external environment. Its superior coordination ability provides bionic design inspiration for the quadruped robot. The motion of three German Shepherd Dogs on a treadmill was recorded using a three-dimensional motion capture system VICON MX. The speed of the treadmill was respectively set at 4 km·h⁻¹ and 10 km·h⁻¹, and the slope was set at 0° and 20°. Workstation, Polygon and MATLAB were utilized for data processing to obtain the joint angles of the German shepherd dog’s forelimbs and hind limbs. The motion frequency of the dog increases, it indicates that the joints move faster to adjust the speed of the treadmill. As the speed of the treadmill increases, the cycle and the stance phase of each limb decrease, the percentages of the stance phase in total cycle are 68.0%, 49.0%, respectively for 4 km·h⁻¹, 10 km·h⁻¹ at 0° slope of the treadmill and 65.6%, 47.1% for 20° slope of the treadmill, it indicates that speed affected the time characteristics, while the slope had little effect on the time characteristics. The joint angles of forelimb and hindlimb show that movement of different joints between different speeds and slopes are various.