Walking excavator
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The term walking excavator may apply to two different forms of heavy equipment, the historic walking power shovel or dragline excavator that began to appear already early in the 20th century, or the contemporary version of all-terrain excavator popularly known as a spider excavator.
The original walking excavators were enormous and unwieldy machines which alternately raised and lowered sets of foot plates or sections of tracks to maneuver in all directions - albeit typically very slowly. The modern equally highly-specialized excavators (which followed a different evolutionary path and are still little known by the general public)[1] more closely resembles as standard small excavator (complete with boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house"). However, in place of a fixed undercarriage its house sits atop articulated limb-like extensions with or without wheels. Each can move independently when necessary, moving in spider-like motion to overcome obstacles or set itself up as a stable platform to work on uneven ground.