Walker (machine)

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A walker is a vehicle that moves on legs rather than wheels or tracks. Walkers have been constructed with anywhere from one to over eight legs; common configurations are one leg (hopper), two legs (biped), four legs (quadruped) and six legs (hexapod). However, also worthy of mention within this category are the fictitious tripods that appear within H. G. Wells' famous The War of the Worlds. Though no complete description of the tripod's (or "fighting-machine", as they are known in the novel) locomotion is given therein, they present amongst the first appearance of walking fighting machines or 'mecha' in modern literature.

While the mobility of walkers is arguably higher than that of wheeled or tracked vehicles, their inherent complexity has limited their use mainly to experimental vehicles, primarily robots. Larger manned walker vehicles have existed, with examples being General Electric's walking truck, the University of Duisburg-Essen's ALDURO, and John Deere's hexapod Walking Forest Machine.

One-legged walkers, hoppers, have been built with some success, but currently the more common walkers are toys like the bipedal QRIO and ASIMO, and the quadruped AIBO.