F R O M T H E G U E S T E D I T O R S
Walking and Running Biped Robots
Eric R. Westervelt and Carlos Canudas-de-Wit
F
ascination with anthropomorphic legged robots and the
advantages of biped locomotion in environments with
discontinuous support are among the reasons why
walking and running biped robots have become a popular
area of research. Other important reasons include the poten-
tial impact on the development of human assistive devices and
the use as a vehicle for the development of novel design and
control methodologies.
The goal of this special issue is to provide a balanced
overview of the current research across the field of biped
locomotion with contributions that are representative of the
research currently taking place across the world. It is hoped
that the tutorial nature of this special issue’s articles will help
usher the advent of reliable and versatile biped robots.
Research in the field of biped locomotion may be roughly
divided into several categories based on the biped’s motion
complexity: two-dimensional bipeds, with motions taking
place in only the sagittal plane, versus three-dimensional
bipeds, with motions taking place in and out of the sagittal
plane; minimalist bipeds, which have a minimal number of
degrees of freedom, versus anthropomorphic bipeds, which
have a large number of degrees of freedom; and bipeds with
passively stable gaits versus bipeds with gaits that are actively
controlled. The bipeds and biped models discussed in this spe-
cial issue cover all categories.
Research in the field may also be divided into two cate-
gories based on technical issues: design and control. The
primary challenge in addressing these issues stems from the
need for robot autonomy. Autonomy, in both the sense of
untethered and not requiring human intervention, is need-
ed for bipeds to be useful. That is, practical biped robots
need to be energetically efficient so that refueling is mini-
mized. Also, practical biped robots need to be functionally
versatile and robust so that they can locomote in a variety
of environments and are not sensitive to uncertainties and
disturbances, such as having an unknown payload or
bumping into an obstacle. Attempting to meet these
requirements gives rise to many interesting and challenging
research topics. This special issue covers a subset of these
topics: mechanical design for efficiency and robustness, the
tradeoff between energetic efficiency and versatility, and
the design of controllers for walking and running. An
overview of the special issue’s contents is given next.
The article by Kuo, “Choosing Your Steps Carefully,” dis-
cusses issues that are fundamental to dynamic walking biped
robots. To determine the potential gains in the energetic
economy of biped walking, several locomotion principles are
6 IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine
examined, including wheeled transport. (Most mobile robots
locomote with wheels since most mobile robot tasks may
be performed as well or better with wheels rather than
legs.) The article begins with a review of the general types
of energy losses that are experienced in locomotion. Then,
wheeled and legged locomotion are compared in terms of
those losses. The comparison includes the zero-moment
point (ZMP) walking principle and the dynamic walking
approach, as well as an examination of the strategies by
which humans maximize their economy. Finally, the arti-
cle considers the design and technical challenges of a
hypothetical biped robot that is both energetically efficient
and versatile.
The article by Spong et al., “Passivity-Based Control of
Bipedal Locomotion,” is an overview of the authors’ results in
regulating walking in bipeds. The article represents a synthesis
of different control approaches based on passivity into a set of
cohesive results that exploit the notion of passive walking.
The article starts with a brief review of the general back-
ground on hybrid Lagrangian models that are typically used to
study biped locomotion and control. Then, the core of the
article discusses three ideas central to energy- and passivity-
based control of bipeds, namely, controlled symmetry, energy
shaping, and trajectory time scaling. Using these concepts, it is
shown how to control walking on varying slopes, ensure
robustness to uncertainties and disturbances, and control
walking speed and gait transitions. The article includes simula-
tion results for the compass-gait biped to illustrate the perfor-
mance of the presented controllers.
The article by Morimoto and Atkeson, “Learning Biped
Locomotion,” proposes a model-based reinforcement learning
algorithm for the control of biped walking. With this algo-
rithm, a robot learns to modulate a walking pattern so that the
resulting gait is stable. The learning algorithm modifies via-
points of the walking pattern’s trajectories based on a learned
model of a Poincaré map to achieve stable walking. The
learning algorithm is first tested in simulation and then in
experiment. The article reports that, in experiment, stable
walking is learned within 100 trials.
The article by Wisse et al., “Passive-Based Walking
Robot,” presents the construction details of the Denise robot,
whose design was heavily influenced by the principles of pas-
sive dynamic walking. Although Denise has been featured in
other publications of the authors, many of the details con-
cerning its construction and control are reported for the first
time. In particular, the article presents a detailed description of
the design and the construction process. The article includes
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comparison of results from walking experiments and from a
simulation of a model of Denise.
The article by Kajita et al, “ZMP-Based Biped Run-
ning Control,” presents the extension of the ZMP walk-
ing principle to running. Since, by definition, running has
an aerial phase, and since the ZMP is not defined during
the aerial phase (when the robot is not in contact with the
ground), the main result of the article is a technique to
extend the ZMP principle to accommodate aerial phases.
The essence of the approach is to first plan a running
motion for an inverted pendulum model of running. The
running motion for the pendulum is then transformed into
a running pattern for the entire robot. Finally, a tracking
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controller is designed to track the transformed running
pattern. The article presents experimental results using the
HRP-2LR running with a mean speed of 0.58 km/hr
(0.16 m/s).
The special issue also includes an announcement by Kuo
and McGeer of the W Prize, an award to the first legged robot
that is able to cross a specified obstacle course with both speed
and efficiency. The essence of the task is to travel 10 km over
an obstacle course in no more than 10,000 s while using no
more than 10 kJ per kg of machine mass. It is hoped that the
W Prize draws attention to the field of legged robots, and in
particular biped robots, as the X Prize (www.xprize.org) did to
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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 7