Original title: QLAUN: A Research-Oriented, Robust, Agile, Modular, and Affordable Torque-Controlled Quadruped Robot
Mohamad S. Moudallal, Noel J. Maalouf · September 2026
Legged robots are often too expensive or complex for many university labs to build and study. To solve this, researchers designed QLAUN Bot, an affordable, four-legged robot built to be robust, agile, and easy to maintain. It works using modular, interchangeable legs that contain zero electronics, making them simple to swap out. Almost the entire robot is 3D-printed out of polylactic acid (PLA) plastic and put together with off-the-shelf parts. Each leg uses custom 3D-printed motors paired with low-ratio gears and belts to boost joint turning force. The hip and knee motors are separated from each other to keep the build modular. The researchers found that this setup yields a functioning 15 kg machine with flexible joints, including a hip that can spin continuously. They also showed that flexible feet printed from TPU-95AA flexible 3D-printing material used for the robot's foot to absorb shocks and handle uneven ground. plastic absorb hard impacts and steady the robot over uneven ground.
When a kitchen appliance like a blender breaks, you often have to send the entire unit for repair or replace it altogether. Here, the robot's legs are designed like detachable blender blades: they can be printed and swapped out without any connection to the motor or wiring inside. In this paper, the electronics-free leg strategy means the complex parts stay separate, so fixing a leg is as simple as clicking in a new one.
This robot makes advanced robotics research accessible to universities and institutes in Lebanon and the MENA region, where budgets are often limited. By being cheap to build and easy to repair, it allows more scientists to study how robots move on varied terrain.
The abstract presents an extended abstract that introduces the design concepts but does not include experimental results, performance data, or validation of robustness and agility in real-world tests. It focuses on the platform's features rather than specific research applications or outcomes.
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QLAUN: A Research-Oriented, Robust, Agile, Modular, and Affordable Torque-Controlled Quadruped Robot — Mohamad S. Moudallal, Noel J. Maalouf
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.