  Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within
the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer
numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls,
and navigate through tight spaces. These robots have the potential to be used
for various applications, such as search and rescue, inspection, surveillance,
and more. The state-of-the-art still faces many challenges, including limited
degrees of freedom, a lack of diversity in gait trajectories, insufficient limb
dexterity, and limited payload capabilities. To address these challenges, we
develop a modular soft-limbed robot that can mimic the locomotion of pinnipeds.
By using a modular design approach, we aim to create a robot that has improved
degrees of freedom, gait trajectory diversity, limb dexterity, and payload
capabilities. We derive a complete floating-base kinematic model of the
proposed robot and use it to generate and experimentally validate a variety of
locomotion gaits. Results show that the proposed robot is capable of
replicating these gaits effectively. We compare the locomotion trajectories
under different gait parameters against our modeling results to demonstrate the
validity of our proposed gait models.
