Originally Posted by RedShoe

cockroaches indeed use tripodal stability which is what scientists were basing a lot of robots on a few years ago. It seems now with better robotic stabilization methods that bipedal is what they are improving these days.

Because they use tripodal stability the idea is that anything using this principal can go infinitely faster and improve it's stability. Bipedal can not, it will never be as fast as tripodal.

We had an entomologist come in and show us hours of video of cockroaches running and how they functioned as well as video of how scientists use them to study tripodal stability.

Even though the idea is that tripodal stability is a far better method of transportation for it's stability and speed advantages, but it was discovered (with the videos that I mentioned) that some roaches will often run so fast that they will actually lift and tuck in their front 4 legs and only use their back two legs when running at full speed. They don't do it for very long, but they do. Tripodal stability can work infinitely but roaches have limitations so to improve themselves they will tuck their front 4 legs for quick bursts of speed.