A Framework for the Control of Stable Aperiodic Walking in Underactuated Planar Bipeds

Abstract

This paper 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 on a model of a 5-link biped.