Desert ants Cataglyphis spec. monitor inclination and distance covered through force-based sensing in their legs. To transfer this mechanism to legged robots, artificial neural networks are used to determine the inclination angle of an experimental ramp from the motor data of the legs of a commercial hexapod walking robot. It is possible to determine the inclination angle of the ramp based on the motor data of the robot legs read out during a run. The result is independent of the weight and orientation of the robot on the ramp and hence robust enough to serve as an independent odometer.