Exploiting the Passive Dynamics of a Compliant Leg to Develop Gait Transitions
For researchers in bipedal locomotion, this provides a method to induce gait transitions without changing energy, but the work is incremental as it builds on existing SLIP models.
This paper analyzes the SLIP model for bipedal locomotion, identifying stable and unstable regions and showing how unstable regions can be exploited to induce gait transitions at constant energy, with simple control policies achieving near-constant stability.
In the area of bipedal locomotion, the spring loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) model has been proposed as a unified framework to explain the dynamics of a wide variety of gaits. In this paper, we present a novel analysis of the mathematical model and its dynamical properties. We use the perspective of hybrid dynamical systems to study the dynamics and define concepts such as partial stability and viability. With this approach, on the one hand, we identified stable and unstable regions of locomotion. On the other hand, we found ways to exploit the unstable regions of locomotion to induce gait transitions at a constant energy regime. Additionally, we show that simple non-constant angle of attack control policies can render the system almost always stable.