  Introduction Passive-dynamic walkers have no external actuation or controllers, they utilize only gravitational force to walk down a slope. Such devices can be used to study what mechanisms that enable natural human biped walking. Moreover, gaining a deeper insight into passive-dynamic walking could help to improve the design of powered biped walkers, i.e. making their locomotion more natural and energy efficient. So called under-actuated walkers have already been developed. They have ''weak'' actuators and need to utilize the principles learned from passive-dynamic walkers also, in order to walk. It has been shown that such walkers indeed are very energy efficient. Physical Experiments Below are some animations of my simple experimental passive-dynamic walker. It is walking down a slope, utilizing only the gravitational force for its locomotion (in case the movie clips fail to open, please download the files to your local machine first, and then try to open again).
|