Microorganisms with appendages (e.g., flagella) have diverse strategies to locomote in highly viscous environments. Developing micron sized robots has become of interest to model the diverse locomotive behaviors. Yet, developing a microrobot without the use of external actuation (e.g., magnetic field) remains a challenge. To model low Reynolds swimming, we developed macroscopic robophysical models (body length of 3.87 cm) with the capability to generate self-driven movement in viscous fluids (mineral oil, 1,000 cSt). Our robots have four appendages that are independently actuated, designed to capture aspects of unicellular quadriflagellate algae. While different species of quadriflagellate algae share similar morphology, they exhibit differences in swimming speeds. We posit this is due to differences in their appendage coordination (e.g., gaits). We measured swimming performance in three distinct gaits, the pronk, the trot, and the gallop, and tested the effects of appendage orientation relative to the cell body. When the flagella were oriented perpendicular to the body, the robot achieved a speed of 0.020-0.1 body lengths per second depending on the gait. Results are comparable to microorganisms’ performance, in particular the trot enables a higher speed than the pronk and the gallop. When the flagella were oriented parallel to the body, swimming performance decreased significantly for all gaits. Our results show that a minimal robophysical model has significant potential for understanding the control principles of low Reynolds swimming as seen in unicellular microorganisms.