To your first point, wouldn't a robot like that benefit from staggering the action of the legs? Instead of X impact at one point in time, have X/2 impact at two

To your first point, wouldn't a robot like that benefit from staggering the action of the legs? Instead of X impact at one point in time, have X/2 impact at two points in time? Would that create too much strain? For my conclusion in point two, my insight comes from experience of copying animal movement. When I trained parkour my friends and I would copy animal movement from across the whole animal kingdom[1]. Here's an example of quadrupedal movement[2]. A big problem for us bipeds in trying to run like quadrupeds is that our legs tend to be big, long and inflexible, while our arms tend to be much weaker than our legs. The effect of this combination is to make running properly like a an animal which evolved to run on all fours quite difficult. From my own experience, putting my legs more and more forward past my arms (i.e. copying the cheetah), made for a much easier time. If you were to try to run like the robot, with symmetrical action, it would be extremely uncomfortable, because the impact is large at every step. Staggering the action allows for a much smoother run. Make any human run like that and they'll eventually automatically switch to the less impactful staggered run. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymg1-Fhl69w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymg1-Fhl69w [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8oh5Xuy7NA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8oh5Xuy7NA