It is known that the kinematics of a quadruped robot is complex due to its
topology and the redundant actuation in the robot. However, it is fundament
al to compute the inverse and direct kinematics for the sophisticated contr
ol of the robot in real-time. In this paper, the translational crawl gait o
f a quadruped robot is introduced and the approach to find the solution of
the kinematics for such a crawl motion is proposed. Since the resulting kin
ematics is simplified, the formulation can be used for the real-time contro
l of the robot. The results of simulation and experiment shows that the pre
sent method is feasible and efficient.