Verification of biped robot using point-contact type foot with springs for walking on rough terrain

Abstract

This study introduces a biped robot designed with a point-contact type foot with springs (PCFS) and proposes a control method for stable walking on rough terrain. Realizing stable walking on rough terrain is important because biped robots are expected to assist humans not only in flat and known environments but also on rough ground surfaces with unknown terrain variances. The PCFS is a new foot system that was proposed in our previous study, which realizes stability on complex ground surfaces and suppresses impact force during foot landing. To adjust a foot position and posture in response to the declination between the predicted and actual ground surfaces, we proposed a landing controller for uncertain rough terrain. In this study, we also propose a dynamic walking pattern for the biped robot and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method via simulation results.