Active walking robot mimicking flat-footed passive dynamic walking

Abstract

Many biped robots that achieve high-efficient walking have been proposed in the recent years. Many researchers have thus developed biped robots that achieve active walking based on passive dynamic walking (PDW). Although these biped robots achieve energy-efficient active walking, their walking speed is generally slow. We have proposed a flat-footed PDW robot with the ankle springs and inerters. Using the ankle inerters, this robot achieves more high-speed PDW than PDW of conventional flat-footed robots. We thus developed a flat-footed biped robot achieving active walking on level ground by mimicking the flat-footed PDW. By simulations and experiments, we show that our biped robot achieves more highspeed and energy-efficient active walking than conventional biped robots.

Wobbling mass effects for a walking robot with inerters

“…Hanazawa el al. developed a limit cycle walker that has ankle mechanical impedances (elasticity, viscosity and inertia) and showed limit cycle walkers can achieve energy-efficient and high-speed walking with appropriate ankle impedances [9] [10]. Limit cycle walkers have a property that nominal trajectory of walking becomes a stable limit cycle and the trajectories near that cycle converge to it.…”

Robust walking of biped robot on uneven terrain using effect of wobbling mass

“…Hanazawa el al. developed a limit cycle walker that has ankle mechanical impedances (elasticity, viscosity and inertia) and showed limit cycle walkers can achieve energy-efficient and high-speed walking with appropriate ankle impedances [7] [8].…”

Speeding-Up method for biped limit cycle walking using asymmetric swing-leg motion

“…One of the approaches is active dynamic walking based on the principle of passive dynamic walking [4]. This walking is called limit cycle walking and biped robots achieving limit cycle walking have been developed [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. The limit cycle walkers achieve more energy-efficient biped walking than many recent biped robots (e.g.,ASIMO).…”