Current commercially available prosthetic feet have succeeded in decreasing the metabolic cost and increasing the speed of walking compared to walking with conventional, mostly solid prosthetic feet. However, there is still a large discrepancy when compared with a non‐disabled gait, and the walking pattern remains strongly disturbed. During the stance phase of the leg, t...

Theoretical and Experimental Issues in Biped Walking Control Based on Passive Dynamics

Many legged robots have been developed, and some of them have already achieved dynamically stable bipedal and quadruped locomotion. Common characteristics of these conventional legged robots are that their motions are precisely manipulated by their control (i.e., gait and balance). In the case of ASIMO (Hirose et al., 2001) and HRP2 (Kaneko et al., 2004), their dynamically stable bipedal locomo...

As a robot could be stable statically standing on three or more legs, a six legged walking robot can be highly flexible in movements and perform different missions without dealing with serious kinematic and dynamic problems. An experimental six legged walking robot with 18 degrees of freedom is studied and built in this paper. The kinematic and gait analysis formulations are demonstrated by an e...

Humanoid and walking robots have been widely developed and their use in human environments is not far out of reach. The main problems in practical applications of machine walking are energy consumption, complex control and design, and high cost. The main feasible indoor application of a walking machine is that of a humanoid robot as a companion, nurse, guide, or information desk or reception cl...

This paper describes experiments with an electrically actuated one legged hopping robot the ARL Monopod While a spring mass system comprised of the leg spring and the body mass has previously provided the basic passive dynamic vertical motion we have now added a spring in se ries with the hip actuator to use the same passive dynamic principle for the leg swing motion This paper validates our pr...

Passive ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) are often prescribed for children with cerebral palsy (CP) to assist locomotion, but predicting how specific device designs will impact energetic demand during gait remains challenging. Powered AFOs have been shown to reduce energy costs of walking in unimpaired adults more than passive AFOs, but have not been tested in children with CP. The goal of this study...

Previous research has shown that passive (or ballistic) walking is an energetic efficient and mechanical cheap way of walking. Therefore ballistic walking would be suitable for apphcauons in rehabilitation technology and autonomous robots. Successful application would require a smooth hip trajectory in ordet to protect respectively the patient or electronics against large velocity changes due t...