Generation of Stealth Walking Gait for Underactuated Rimless Wheel with Upper Body

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for generating a stable stealth walking gait of an underactuated rimless wheel (URW). First, we introduce an URW model and design two controllers; one is for strictly controlling the angular positions and velocities of the stance leg during the single-limb support phase, and the other is for controlling the upper body angle to the initial one during the double-limb support phase. Second, we investigate the validity of the proposed control methods and discuss the energy efficiency of the generated gait through numerical simulations. Furthermore, we discuss the changing tendency of the ground reaction force and zero-moment point to the system parameters.