The field of robotics is moving towards the development of more agile, adaptive, and reconfigurable machines. Researchers are drawing inspiration from nature, such as the reconfigurability of legged animals, to create machines that can rapidly repair, redesign, and recombine to meet new tasks or recover from injury. This is being achieved through the use of autonomous modular legs, optimization methods, and novel mechanical structures. Another area of focus is the development of robust navigation systems for quadruped robots, which are becoming increasingly popular due to their stability and agility. These systems rely on low-cost sensors and combine contact-aided kinematic, visual-inertial odometry, and depth-stabilized vision to achieve accurate localization and mapping. Additionally, researchers are exploring the use of spine control strategies in quadrupedal robots to achieve more natural and fluid movements, which has potential applications in social robot scenarios. Noteworthy papers in this area include:

• a study on reconfigurable legged metamachines that introduces autonomous modular legs and enables rapid repair and redesign,
• a paper on optimal design of walking robots that presents novel multicriteria synthesis methods for achieving optimal leg design and
• a report on robust localization, mapping, and navigation for quadruped robots that presents a first step towards a robust navigation stack relying only on low-cost sensors.