Design and control of an underactuated three-link rolling biped

We present the design and control of a simple three-link underactuated synthetic wheel biped composed of a torso and two legs with arc-shaped feet. The equations of motion are derived and a controller based on feedback linearization is used to constrain the controllable degrees of freedom and develop a simple gait. Experimental results show successful gait generation and relatively good trajectory tracking. The data on energy consumption indicates a reasonably low cost of transport, even without design or trajectory optimization.