Speed, efficiency, and stability of small-slope 2D passive dynamic bipedal walking

Abstract

This paper addresses some performance limits of the kneed and non-kneed passive-dynamic walking machines discovered by McGeer (1990). Energetic inefficiency is measured by the slope /spl gamma/ needed to sustain gait, with /spl gamma/=0 being perfectly efficient. We show some necessary conditions on the walker mass distribution to achieve perfectly efficient walking. From our experience and study of a simpler model, only two gaits exist; the longer-step gait is stable at small enough slopes. Speed is regulated by energy dissipation. Dissipation can be dominated by a term proportional to speed or a term proportional to speed from normal foot collisions, depending on the gait, slope, and walker design. For special mass distributions of kneeless walkers, the long-step gaits are especially fast at small slopes. A period doubling route to chaos is numerically demonstrated for the kneed walker.