Integrated structure-control design of a bipedal robot based on passive dynamic walking

The design of bipedal robots is generally fulfilled through considering a sequential design approach, where a synergistic relationship between its structure and control features is not promoted. Hence, a novel integrated structure-control design approach is proposed to simultaneously obtain the optimal structural description, the torque magnitudes, and the on/off time intervals for the control signal input of a semi-passive bipedal robot. The proposed approach takes advantage of the natural dynamics of the system and the control signal activation/deactivation for generating stable gait cycles with minimum energy consumption. Consequently, the passive features of the semi-passive bipedal robot are included in the integrated structure-control design process through evaluating the system behavior along consecutive passive and semi-passive walking stages. Then, the proposed design approach is formulated as a nonlinear discontinuous dynamic optimization problem, where the solution search is carried out using the differential evolution algorithm due to the discontinuities of the semi-passive bipedal robot dynamics. The results of the proposal are compared with those obtained by a sequential design process. The integrated structure-control design achieves a reduction of 63.55% in the value of the performance function related to the synergy between the walking capability and energetic efficiency, with a reduction in the activation of the control and its magnitude of 95.41%.