Inducing dynamically stable walking in an underactuated prototype planar biped

This paper presents the experimental implementation and validation of a framework for the systematic design, analysis, and performance enhancement of controllers that induce stable walking in N-link underactuated planar biped robots. Controllers designed via this framework act by enforcing virtual constraints - holonomic constraints imposed via feedback - on the robot's configuration. The stability properties of the resulting walking motions may be easily analyzed in terms of a two-dimensional sub-dynamic of the full walking model. The experimental validation is performed on RABBIT, a 5-link prototype constructed by the French project Commande de Robots a Pattes of the CNRS-GdR Automatique.