Leg with rotational joint that mimics elastic characteristics of human leg in running stance phase

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the development of a leg with a rotational joint that mimics the elastic characteristics of the leg of a running human. The purpose of this development was to realize the dynamics of human running, the analysis of which has revealed that the motion of the leg can be modeled by a compression spring and that of the leg joint by a torsion spring. We, therefore, assumed that these elastic characteristics could be used to develop robots capable of human-like running, which requires higher output power than that of existing humanoid robots. Hence, we developed a model of a leg with a rotational joint and fabricated the leg by incorporating a mechanism comprising of two leaf springs for adjusting the joint stiffness. By this means, we were able to achieve human-like joint stiffness, which could be adjusted by varying the effective length of one of the leaf springs. We evaluated the performance of the adjustable stiffness of the joints, and were also able to achieve hopping by resonance of the rotational leg joint.