We consider the displayed phenomena in the semi-passive dynamic walking of a torso-driven biped robot under the OGY control method as it descends inclined surfaces. The desired torso angle is the accessible control parameter. Analysis of the controlled steady semi-passive gaits are carried out mainly by means of bifurcations diagrams and Poincaré sections as the slope parameter varies. Based on...

Active joint torques are the primary source of power and control in dynamic walking motion. However the amplitude, rate, timing and phasic behavior of the joint torques necessary to achieve a natural and stable performance are difficult to establish. The goal of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility and stable behavior of an actively controlled bipedal walking simulation wherein the nat...

To assess energetic costs during rest and locomotion in a small insect, we measured metabolic rate in freely moving ants Camponotus sp. (average body mass 11.9 mg). The animals ran in a straight respirometric chamber in which locomotor speed and CO2 release were monitored simultaneously using flow-through respirometry and conventional video analysis. In resting intact ants, standard metabolic r...

Introduction Human beings spend a substantial amount of time in walking activities. Human locomotion has been therefore extensively studied under laboratory conditions in terms of energetics or biomechanics. However, one drawback is inherent to laboratory experiments: because of the limited experimental perimeter, it is not possible to record a substantial number of consecutive steps. In contra...

Realization of natural and energy-efficient dynamic walking has come to be one of the main subjects in the research area of robotic biped locomotion. Recently, many approaches considering the efficiency of gait have been proposed and McGeer’s passive dynamic walking (McGeer, 1990) has been attracted as a clue to elucidate the mechanism of efficient dynamic walking. Passive dynamic walkers can w...

This paper is concerned with the passive walking of an underactuated biped robot. First, we present the modelling of the biped robot (that is a 7 DOF robot). Then, we focus on the study of the almost passive dynamic walking. In particular, we show that the application of a nonlinear feedback control to stabilize the torso and knees leads the biped robot to perform a stable almost-passive dynami...

This paper continues our investigations into the passivity-based control of the compass gait biped. It was shown in [14] for the compass gait biped, and in [15] for the general case, that a passive limit cycle for a given constant slope can be made slope invariant via potential energy shaping control. In this paper we consider the application of total energy shaping to this problem. Using a con...

Many researchers have controlled and analyzed biped robots that walk in the sagittal plane. Nevertheless, walking robots require the capability to walk merely laterally, when they are faced with the obstacles such as a wall. In walking robot field, both nonlinearity of the dynamic equations and also having a tracking system cause an effective control has to be utilized to address these problems...