Actuated dynamic walking in biped robots: Control approach, robot design and experimental validation

Abstract

This paper presents and experimentally demonstrates a control approach for actuated dynamic walking in biped robots. Rather than utilizing trajectory tracking, we proposed a control approach which employs state dependent control torques generated by low-gain spring-damper couples to encourage patterned motion of the robot. In order to verify that the control idea provides natural looking (human-like) dynamic walking, a seven-link biped robot was designed with backdrivable joint actuators, which allows passive leg motion. Following a discussion on robot design and the real-time control implementation, experimental data is presented to validate the proposed methodology.