Effects of toe-off and heel-off motions on gait performance of biped robots

Abstract

In this paper, it is highly proposed to take into account of both heels and active toe joints during the walking of a biped robot with 7-DOF legs. The main goal of this research is to examine significance of exploiting heels and active toe joints on reducing the maximum knee joint torque as well as the total energy consumption. To this end, six different walking patterns are presented, while the main purpose is minimizing the maximum knee joint torques and the total energy consumption. In the simplest pattern, each step consists of one single-support phase and one double-support phase, considering flat sole in both phases. In the most complex pattern, each step consists of two subphases during the single-support phase and also two subphases during the double-support phase. These subphases are created using heels and active toes. Consequently, the most effective pattern in terms of the maximum torque of knee joint and the total energy consumption is specified.