A Novel Approximation for the Spring Loaded Inverted Pendulum Model of Locomotion

摘要

The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) is one of the simplest models of robot locomotion. SLIP is commonly used to predict the center of mass motion and derive simple control laws for stable locomotion. However, the SLIP model is not integrable, which means that no closed-form relation can be derived to understand how the design and control parameters of the SLIP model affect stable locomotion. There exist a number of different analytical approximations to the SLIP model when considering small step lengths and symmetric steps. In this paper, we present a novel approximation to the SLIP model without relying on the small step length and the symmetric step assumption. The model was found to accurately predict the stability of the SLIP model for large and asymmetric steps and was used to design a controller to stabilize the SLIP model in a couple of steps.