A mechatronic analysis and synthesis of human walking gait

Abstract

Human walking gait (HWG) involves concurrently complex aspects of control, signal conditioning and processing, motion capture and biomechanical analysis as well as bioelectronic instrumentation and robot control. To merge some of these concepts into a unique framework, in this paper, a computational mechatronics scheme is proposed for the analysis and synthesis of HWG based on a seven-link sagittal rigid dynamical biped robot in closed-loop with an advanced force/position/velocity model-free position-force controller. Desired trajectories come from real human motion data: Lower-limbs walking gaits kinematic patterns are captured with a human motion Vicon ® tracker system, including landing point, and impact (ground reaction) forces are obtained from femur/tibial muscles via EMG. A criteria is established to map such signals into a 7 DoF workspace of the dynamical biped robot. Fast dynamical tracking is achieved under real HWG patters, which provides greater insight into the design and control process of humanoid robotic biped locomotion.