Control of aperiodic walking and the energetic effects of parallel joint compliance of planar bipedal robots

In this dissertation, two problems related to bipedal robot walking are presented. The first problem is the influence of parallel knee joint compliance on the average power cost of walking in an underactuated planar bipedal robot, ERNIE. The second problem is the design of walking controllers that induce aperiodic bipedal robot walking.; It has been found that compliance plays important roles in walking and running in animals. Compliance has been used in robotic bipedal machines to improve energetic efficiency or reduce the peak power demand on the robot's actuators. This dissertation presents numerical and experimental studies of the influence of parallel knee joint compliance on the average power cost of walking in an underactuated planar bipedal robot, ERNIE. The use of parallel compliance does not increase the control design complexity, as would the addition of series compliance. Four scenarios were studied: one without springs and three with springs of different stiffnesses and preloads. Optimal gaits in terms of average power cost for various speeds were designed for each scenario. It was found that for low-speed walking, soft springs are helpful to reduce power cost, while stiffer springs increase power cost. For high-speed walking, it was found that both soft and stiff springs reduce the average power cost of walking, but stiffer springs reduce the cost more than do softer springs.; The second problem addressed in this dissertation is aperiodic walking controller design. Along with the energetic efficiency of bipedal walking, the ability to walk stably in varying environments or with different tasks, such as stepping over stones, is another major concern in bipedal walking. In these scenarios, the walking is not periodic. This dissertation presents a new definition of stable walking that is not necessarily periodic for a class of biped robots. The inspiration for the definition is the commonly-held notion of stable walking: the biped does not fall. To make the definition useful, an algorithm is given to verify if a given controller induces stable walking. Also given is a framework to synthesize controllers that induce stable walking. The results are illustrated with numerical simulation and experiments.; This dissertation also presents details of a modeling procedure for the experimental bipedal robot, ERNIE, and explores the possibility to apply iterative learning control to bipedal walking.