Ken Waldron is faculty emeritus for mechanical and aerospace engineering. Robert McGhee is former professor with the department of electrical engineering.
In the 1980s, Waldron and McGhee led a 60-member team of students and technical assistants to develop one of the first walking machine known formerly as the Adaptive Suspension Vehicle. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the “Walker” was a 3-ton, six-legged mechanical walking machine created to test the feasibility of a vehicle that moved by legs, instead of wheels or tracks. As a legged vehicle, the design allowed it to better move industrial and military cargo in multiple terrain types.
The vehicle was also explored for use as a cargo carrier in logging, construction and mining applications.