With free walk velocity; the individual will naturally enlist the speed that will provide maximum energy efficiency. Inspired by this idea, we exploit a passivity based control strategy to study, the preferred walking gait of a compass-like biped robot. In fact, for any ground slope, we use a dynamic optimization of the mechanical cost which is proportional to the mechanical work in the system ...

Robotics control problems, such as gait coordination, require sequential solutions where a series of actions is continually repeated. Genetic Algorithms that do parameter optimization have not been widely applied to these cyclic sequential decision problems; although some form of evolutionary computation would be well suited for the adaptability required. In this paper we introduce Cyclic Genet...

Biped locomotion has proven to be a very hard problem to solve. At current date, there exists no humanoid robot that can move as dynamic and robust as humans do. Even though there has been much research and certainly some interesting progress in biped locomotion, there is certainly no single solution that provides robots with the same capabilities as humans. What seems to be especially lacking ...

Numerical simulation and optimization of gaits for quadruped robots based on nonlinear multibody dynamics models of legged locomotion have made progress recently. A fully threedimensional dynamical model of Sony’s four-legged robot is used to state an optimal control problem for a symmetric, dynamically stable gait. The optimal control problem is solved by a sparse direct collocation method. Nu...

Many practical optimization problems, especially in robotics, involve multiple competing objectives, e.g. performance metrics such as speed and energy efficiency. Proper treatment of these objective functions is often overlooked. Additionally, optimization of the performance of robotic systems can be restricted due to the expensive nature of testing control parameters on a physical system. This...

This work introduces a new driven gait orthosis (DGO) based on the pneumatical exoskeleton leg for locomotor training. This device can drive the lower-limb of a patient in a physiological way on the moving treadmill following the given gait which fits to the individual needs. Therefore, it can help a patient who suffers lower-limbs paralysis to recover his walking ability. Mechanisms were desig...

In this paper, we present the design of an electromechanical above-knee active prosthesis with energy storage and regeneration. The system consists of geared knee and ankle motors, parallel springs for each motor, an ultracapacitor, and controllable four-quadrant power converters. The goal is to maximize the performance of the system by finding optimal controls and design parameters. A model of...

The generation of walking motions for humanoid robots is a challenging task. From the infinite number of possibilities to move the body of the robot with its redundant degrees of freedom (DOF) forward, the task is to determine those motions that are stable, feasible within the robots kinematic and dynamic limitations, and also resemble the way we expect an anthropomorphic system to walk. Severa...

An algorithm of parametric optimization to achieve optimal cyclic gaits in space for a thirteen-link 3D bipedal robot with twelve actuated joints is proposed. The cyclic walking gait is composed of successive single support phases and impulsive impacts with full contact between the sole of the feet and the ground. The evolution of the joints are chosen as spline functions. The parameters to def...

When generating gaits for soft robots (those with no explicit joints), it is not evident that undulating control schemes are the most efficient. In considering alternative control schemes, however, the computational costs of evaluating continuum mechanic models of soft robots represent a significant bottleneck. We consider the use of lumped dynamic models for soft robotic systems. Such models h...