An anthropomorphic biped robot: dynamic concepts and technological design

The authors of this study are a part of a joint project, involving four French laboratories, whose goal is the design and construction of a mechanical biped robot with anthropomorphic characteristics. In the first section of this paper, we will examine mechanical architectures of some representatives of state-of-the art biped robots by focusing on their kinematic arrangement. It is widely known that the existence of natural gaits is closely linked to the intrinsic dynamic characteristics of the mechanical structure of the biped robot. In order to further develop this idea, two studies will be presented in the second section: the first is relative to the lateral instability of the system while the second deals with the existence of passive pendular gaits during the swing phase of walking in the sagittal plane. In the last section, in correlation with the observations made, we will gain insight into main characteristics of the mechanical architecture that we have designed for the BIP project: 15 active degrees of freedom (DOF), joints actuated by special transmission system, anthropometric mass distribution