Preface

Animal and human locomotion show a high agility and the ability to handle difficult terrain. The research field of legged locomotion has increased rapidly over the last few decades. Fascinating and promising results were achieved and there are still numerous problems to be solved and a large field to discover. This semester thesis was written in autumn term 2011 at the Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab (BIRL) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). I want to thank my supervisor Derek Leach for his continuing support during the project and Prof. F. Iida for the opportunity to work on this project. Especially I want to thank Prof. R. I. Leine for the discussion of the results and the competent feedback.