Velocity-Based Gait Planning for Underactuated Bipedal Robot on Uneven and Compliant Terrain

This article develops a gait planning method for underactuated bipedal robot on uneven and compliant terrain. First, we employ a linear spring-damper model to describe foot-ground compliant contact, and establish a decoupled robot–ground three-dimensional dynamic mode. Second, based on a velocity-based bipedal stability definition and human walking characteristics, we propose a gait planning method to realize underactuated bipedal walking on uneven and compliant terrain. We decouple bipedal gait planning into sagittal and lateral master-slave ones. By planning the motion state of Center-of-Mass (CoM) of a robot, we make the movement of lateral and sagittal coincident such that bipedal walking is realized. Finally, underactuated bipedal walking with an average walking speed of 0.216 m/s and a step length of 183.9 mm is realized on uneven terrain where the maximum height of unevenness is 32 mm. The experimental results show that underactuated bipedal walking can be realized on uneven and compliant terrain by using the proposed method to control robot CoM and track its desired velocity.