Effect of Trunk Swinging Behaviors on Planar Bipedal Walking with an Upper Body on Gentle Slope

Abstract

Bipedal walking locomotion is one of the characteristics of human behavior. Both the lower body and the upper body (trunk) behaviors affect walking characteristics. To achieve a suitable gait, it is important to understand the effect of the trunk behavior. Therefore, in this paper, the effects of three types of trunk swinging behavior on planar bipedal gait in a model with an upper body – forward swinging, backward swinging, and no swinging – were evaluated using numerical simulations. To reduce control inputs and reflect the effect of upper body behavior, an underactuated bipedal walker without knee joints was adopted. This walker walked down a gentle slope using only hip actuation between the stance leg and the trunk. As a result, unique gait characteristics that depended on the direction of the trunk swinging behavior were found, including a longer step length and a lower-frequency gait with forward trunk swinging behavior and a shorter step length and higher-frequency gait with smaller angular momentum with backward trunk swinging behavior.