Towards active actuated natural walking humanoid robot legs

The objective of this paper is to investigate towards active actuated natural walking humanoid robot legs. Conventional humanoid robots suffer from problems like artificial and unnatural motion, or low agility. To improve the performance of the humanoid robot, this paper introduces the idea which employs the active-actuated biped robot legs and the passive dynamic walkers with more naturally walking. The approach is primarily based on the utilization of shock absorber and parallel linkage mechanism and the walking algorithm which combines “Series Elastic Actuation” and “Limit Cycle Walking”. The shock absorbers mounted in series way enable the implementation of the conventional “Series Elastic Actuation”, and the shock absorbers mounted in parallel way are added as the modification in order to store the energy of the actuators like the human muscle. The specifically designed mechanism provides better support and lower load of the motor than traditional design. The hardware prototype has been implemented. The simulation and analysis demonstrate the high potential and possibilities of this concept and provide the new direction towards the naturally walking humanoid robot legs design.