A novel design of flexible foot system for humanoid robot

Abstract

The Large-scale uneven ground is mostly unsmooth and in the irregular state in which the irregularity is usually unknown (such as footway, carriageway, unexplored desert, mountainous area, surface of the Mars). In order to walk steadily and rapidly on such ground, a chief problem to overcome is that the humanoid robot's foot is not matching with the unknown model of the ground. Therefore, the humanoid robot's foot should have the flexibility mimic the human's foot, and can adapt to and steadily interacted with any unsmooth ground. Also interferences and disjoints between soles and irregular unsmooth ground should be avoided. Aiming at solving the key problem for humanoid robot to steadily and rapidly walk on the large-scale and three-dimension uneven ground, we've set up a new multidegree-of-freedom flexible foot mechanism which can make the humanoid robot's walking gesture and gait automatically adapt to the terrain, and then carry out the research of the globally stable control of the gait. The flexibility can obviously improve the humanoid robot's walking stability and speediness on the large-scale uneven ground.

Design and Experimental Development of a Pneumatic Stiffness Adjustable Foot System for Biped Robots Adaptable to Bumps on the Ground

“…According to the sensor values, the foot landing pattern was modified to guarantee a support polygon on uneven terrain with three or four spikes [24]. In [25], a flexible foot with 12 degrees of freedom was designed. Connected by four independently-actuated parts, the foot sole could maintain multi-point contact on complicated terrains.…”

Modeling and analysis of a biomimetic foot mechanism

“…They can walk just on an even terrain. Though such foot mechanisms have a soft material like rubber [4] or spring [5] in order to absorb an impact from ground contact, they cannot structurally absorb the impact. Chung and Yi [6] analyzed the toe mechanisms of humans and animals.…”