Walking of Underactuated Biped Robot with Knee Joints Fixed by Its Own Weight

Abstract

This paper shows walking of an underactuated biped robot. This biped robot has a mechanism such that the knee joint is fixed by its own weight to the knee joint stopper when the knee joint is in hyper extension. Using this mechanism, we designed a gait that does not require knee joint torque of stance leg. The ability to walk with the proposed gait is confirmed by numerical simulations. We also designed a conventional gait such that the hips slightly lower and the knee joints are in flexion. We simulated walking with this conventional gait. As a result, the energy consumption of the proposed gait was lower than that of the conventional gait.