Design of a Biped Robot With Torsion Springs at the Joints for Reduced Energy Consumption During Walk

摘要

Biped robots have multiple degrees of freedom for walking and hence they consume a lot of energy. In this paper it is proposed that adding torsion springs at the joints of an 8 DOF biped will lead to reduced energy consumption during walk. First the dynamic equations of motion of the biped robot are obtained incorporating the torsion springs at the joints. Using the dynamic model the total energy consumed during walk was evaluated for a single step. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) based algorithm was developed for finding the energy optimal trajectory during gait by comparing all the possible trajectories. It is first proved that addition of torsion springs at the joints lead to reduction of energy consumption as compared to a biped with no springs. All the gait parameters were then optimized to get the optimum values for the spring constants at each joint, reference angle of springs and length of each step. It is proved that using these optimal parameters the proposed biped robot consumes the least energy.