Abstract
Recently, it has been widely recognized that control and mechanical systems cannot be designed separately due to their tight interdependency. However, there still leaves much to be understood about how well-balanced coupling between control and mechanical systems can be achieved. Therefore, as an initial step toward this goal, this study intensively discusses the effect of the intrinsic dynamics of a robot's body on the resulting behavior, in the hope that mechanical systems appropriately designed will allow us to significantly reduce the complexity of control algorithm required as well as to increase the robustness against the environmental perturbation. More precisely, this paper deals with the adaptive selection between passive dynamic walking and running, particularly focusing on the body dynamics properties.
