コントロールモーメントジャイロによる準受動歩行機構の提案

抄録

Robots are being used in well-designed environments such as in factories. Walking is superior to wheeled locomotion in that it can pass over steps and discontinuous surfaces, and bipedal robots are expected to be consistent with environments designed for humans. To improve stability in bipedal robots, use of control moment gyro (CMG) has been proposed. A CMG is a mechanism that rotates a lightweight flywheel at high speed and extracts large inertial force through the gyroscopic effect. The extracted inertia force is used to control the robot's posture, and stable walking is achieved. The simplicity of the robot can be improved if the torque of the CMG is utilized not only for posture stabilization but also for motion generation in an integrated manner. In this study, as an example of a robot that uses CMG torque not only for posture stabilization but also for motion generation, a quasi-passive walking mechanism that moves only by the output of a single CMG unit is proposed. Using the quasi-passive walking mechanism driven by self-excited oscillation as a reference, a method is devised, in which the CMG causes oscillation in the roll direction and the legs swing out by gravity. A walking mechanism with legs of 270 mm in length was fabricated, and the successful walking of the proposed mechanism was confirmed.