Energy-Conserving Gaits for Point-Foot Planar Bipeds: A Five-DOF Case Study

We propose a general method for designing energy-conserving gaits for point-foot planar bipeds. The method relies on satisfying specific boundary conditions for joint trajectories of the biped. These boundary conditions ensure that potential and kinetic energies of the biped are the same at the beginning and end of each step and there is no impact, i.e, no energy loss, at the time of swing-foot touchdown. The mechanical energy required by the gait over each step is therefore zero from the principle of work and energy. To illustrate the procedure for designing energy-conserving gaits, the proposed method is applied to a general five-dof biped.Copyright © 2013 by ASME