Human-like walking with knee stretched, heel-contact and toe-off motion by a humanoid robot

Abstract

A humanoid robot, WABIAN-2R, capable of human-like walk with stretched knees and heel-contact and toe-off motions is proposed in this paper. WABIAN-2R has two 1-DOF passive joints in its feet to enable it to bend its toes in steady walking. Further, it has two 6-DOF legs, a 2-DOF pelvis, a 2-DOF trunk, two 7-DOF arms with 3-DOF hands, and a 3-DOF neck. In addition, a new algorithm for generating walking patterns with stretched knees and heel-contact and toe-off motions based on the ZMP criterion is described. In this pattern generation, some parameters of the foot trajectories of a biped robot are optimized by using a genetic algorithm in order to generate a continuous and smooth leg motion. Software simulations and walking experiments are conducted, and the effectiveness of the pattern generation and mechanism of WABIAN-2R, which have the ability to realize more human-like walking styles in a humanoid robot, are confirmed