四脚準受動的動歩行器“Duke-II”における歩容遷移の実験的検証

抄録

The study of passive dynamic walking, among other techniques, is used to understand how animals walk. In our previous study, a quadrupedal robot inspired by passive dynamic walking was developed. This robot, named “Duke”, has only two actuators, which simply provide a rocking motion. The robot was able to walk by exerting little energy in the lateral direction using inverted pendulums. We call this locomotion quasi-passive dynamic walking. For this paper, a new robot named “Duke-II” was developed in order to investigate this type of motion more analytically. Duke-II is based on the design of the original Duke, and equipped with pressure and acceleration sensors. Using these sensors, we are able to more accurately measure the locomotion. In the experiments, we found that the robot was able to show a gait transition depending on specific parameters. The phenomenon has not been seen in previous study, which are analyzed in this paper.