Experimental study of biped dynamic walking

An experimental study of a biped robot is presented. A new scheme named the "linear inverted pendulum mode" is utilized for controlling a biped walking on rugged terrain. The authors developed a six-DOF biped robot, "Meltran II," which has lightweight legs and moves in a two-dimensional vertical plane. To investigate the effects not well discussed in the theory, the authors carried out two experiments, the support phase experiment and the support exchange experiment. The support phase experiment was carried out to check the actual dynamics of a biped walking under the proposed control. It was shown that the dynamics of the robot can be regarded as linear even though the mass of the legs, which was neglected in the theory, exists. The support exchange experiment was performed to check leg support exchange. The authors found that a smooth leg support exchange is achieved by making the foot contact with a certain vertical speed and holding two-leg support for a certain short period. Based on these results, a whole biped control system was implemented. In the authors' experiment the robot walked over a box of 3.5 cm height at a speed of 20 cm/s.