A physical principle of gait generation and its stabilization derived from mechanism of fixed point

Abstract

Passive walker with knees can walk down shallow slope in a natural gait and can exhibit a stable limit cycle. Though the passive walker is mechanically simple, it is a sort of hybrid system that combines the continuous dynamics of leg-swing motion and the discrete event of leg-exchange. In this paper, we focus on the mechanism of fixed point. We demonstrate a physical principle of gait generation and its stabilization derived from the mechanism of fixed point. Based on the principle, we made a simple improvement on passive walker with knees. The passive walker could have high stability, and could walk on treadmill for 4010 steps