A Biologically Founded Design and Control of a Humanoid Biped

Abstract

In this paper we present LARP (Light Adaptive-Reactive biPed), our humanoid legged system, with the aim to explain how the mechanical design makes the robot able to adapt to the real operating environment. Our aim was to create a system that could represent a good model of human lower limbs, in order to understand how the natural walking motion is achieved and how it can be implemented in a humanoid robot. For this reason, we adopted anthropomorphic feet, knees and a mass-distribution similar to the human limbs. According to (McGeer, 1990)} we designed an actuation system that can take advantage of the natural dynamics of the link. In addition, studying the results we got from our controller we found several similarities with the assumptions of the Equilibrium Point Theory. This is a widely debated theory, formulated in 1965 by A. Feldman (Asatryan, 1965) (Asatryan and Feldman, 1966 a) (Asatryan and Feldman, 1966 b) and still in evolution. This theory proposes that the segmental reflexes, together with the muscle-skeletal system, behave like a spring. Movement is achieved just by moving the equilibrium position of that spring