Development of a foot mechanism for a semi-passive walking robot with variable foot shape

Abstract

This paper proposes a deformable foot mechanism for a semi-passive walking robot. So far, many foot were developed to enhance the performance of walking robots. Those foots are roughly divided into three structures, and those have pros and cons. Therefore, it is expected that the transition between structures enables us to improve the walking performance further. In this paper, we develop a foot mechanism to transit between the flat foot and spherical shape based on the elastic deformation. Though experiments, we verified the utility of the foot deformation.