This thesis deals with compliant actuators and their use in energy efficient walking bipeds. Two types of actuators with adaptable compliance are discussed: PPAM (Pleated Pneumatic Artificial Muscles) and MACCEPA (Mechanically Adjustable Compliance and Controllable Equilibrium Position Actuator). The PPAM is a design made to overcome shortcomings associated with the existing types of pneumatic ...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to examine potential differences in walking, cycling, public transport and passive transport (car/moped/motorcycle) to work and to other destinations between college and non-college educated working young adults. Secondly, we aimed to investigate which psychosocial and environmental factors are associated with the four transport modes and whether these associations d...

There exists a class of two-legged machines for which walking is a natural dynamic mode. Once started on a shallow slope, a machine of this class will settle into a steady gait quite comparable to human walking, without active control or energy input. Interpretation and analysis of the physics are straightforward; the walking cycle, its stability, and its sensitivity to parameter variations are...

Passive Dynamic Walking (PDW) has been receiving increasing attention as a simple walking method with no or less control, therefore no or less energy consumption. To the best of our knowledge, there are no PDW models with a torso although there have been already many studies on PDW. This paper presents the first step towards applying the PDW principle to humanoid robots by adding a torso to a c...

Inspired by locomotion in nature, researchers have developed the passive dynamic walking machine principle and applied it to the legged robotics (Coleman & Ruina, 1998; Collins et al., 2001; Garcia, 1999; McGeer, 1990; Wisse, 2004; Wisse & Frankenhuyzen, 2006). The passive dynamic walking machines provide human-like locomotion in legged robots that is more efficient than the precisely joint-ang...

Many legged robots have been built with a variety of different abilities, from running to hopping to climbing stairs. Despite this however, there has been no consistency of approach to the problem of getting them to walk. Approaches have included breaking down the walking step into discrete parts and then controlling them separately, using springs and linkages to achieve a passive walking cycle...

In our previous work, we have presented results on Virtual Slope Walking, that is when a robot walks on level ground down a virtual slope by leg length modulation, based on the potential energy restoration in Passive Dynamic Walking. In this paper, we introduce the model of Virtual Slope Walking with Trajectory Leg Extension (TLE) and equivalent Instantaneous Leg Extension (ILE) under the Equiv...

This paper presents a simplistic passive dynamic model that is able to create realistic quadrupedal walking, tölting, and trotting motions. The model is inspired by the bipedal spring loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) model and consists of a distributed mass on four massless legs. Each of the legs is either in ground contact, retracted for swing, or is ready for touch down with a predefined angle...