Powered Walking Based on the Passive Dynamic Principles: A Virtual Slope Walking Approach

The presented work is motivated to implement the principles of passive dynamic walking (PDW) on the powered bipeds. The Virtual Slope Walking (VSW), as one PWD control approach, is chosen to be mathematically analyzed and realized to achieve fast dynamic walking. Our method of formulating the fixed point of the limit cycle gait is presented, and the walking pattern generation is designed in the polar coordinate for the better consistency with the model. The algorithms are implemented on a planar robot Stepper-2D, which achieved the walking speed from 0.69m/s upto 1.03m/s. The self-stabilized walking has the best robustness at the speed of 0.81m/s, where the robot was able to walk on the level ground, step over random obstacles smaller than 4% of the leg length, and step over a big obstacle of 7.2% of the leg length.