Asymptotic stabilization of a five-link, four-actuator, planar bipedal runner

Provably asymptotically-stable running-gaits are developed for the five-link, four-actuator bipedal robot, RABBIT. A controller is designed so that the Poincare return map associated with the running gait can be computed on the basis of a model with impulse-effects that, previously, had been used only for the design of walking gaits. This feedback design leads to the notion of a hybrid zero dynamics (HZD) for running and to the closed-form computation of the Poincare return map on the zero dynamics. The main theorem is illustrated via simulation. Animations of the obtained running motion are available on the Web.