A Study of the Energy-Saving Effect of Foot Shape on Planar Passive Bipedal Walking

Abstract

This paper studies an influence of the foot shape on energy-efficiency of passive dynamic walking of a bipedal robot. Two types of bipedal robots are compared in terms of variation of kinetic energy under locomotion. One has point-feet, and another has linear feet. Under the simplification of the robot models, it is proven that the robot with linear feet presents larger walking speed in steady walking compared to the point-footed robot. Is is also verified by numerical simulations that the above claim holds for the case of the original (unsimplified) model. A design method of foot shape is proposed.