Experimental Study on 3-D Speed-variable Biped Walking

Abstract

In this paper, we present an experimental result of 3-D real-time speed-variable biped walking using our second prototype Ostrich-II. Ostrich-II has 10 degrees of freedom; 6 for sagittal plane and 4 for lateral plane. The synchronization of motions in both planes is very important to realize stable walking. We propose Virtual Inverted Pendulum(VIP) method as the solution. We introduce following two techniques; (a) synchronization of the motions in both planes, (b) realization of synchronized acceleration/deceleration. We made an actual biped machine and its control system. We confirmed the effectiveness of VIP method by laboratory experiment. Ostrich-II realizes variable real-time biped walking, such as steady walking (0.5s/step, 0.1m/s), acceleration( from 0.lm/s to 0.2m/s, etc.), and so on.