Design of An Ankle-Foot System with Uneven Terrain Adaptability

Bipedal robots have become a focus in the robot research nowadays because its ability in travelling in human everyday environment, and the ankle-foot design is important for the robot to negotiate with complex terrain. This work develops a robot ankle-foot system which consists of a lower limb, an ankle joint and a foot. The mechanical and actuation system, the embedded sensors and the electronic processing system are described in detail in this work. After that, several experiments are conducted on the ankle-foot system to verify its ability in uneven terrain perception and adaptation. Experimental results show that the ankle-foot system in this work has the potential to enhance the performance of bipedal robots working in sophisticated environments, and can serve as a basic subsystem in the later research of bipedal robots.