Using parallel stiffness to achieve improved locomotive efficiency with the Sandia STEPPR robot

Anirban Mazumdar, Steven Spencer, Jonathan Salton, Clinton Hobart, Joshua Love, Kevin Dullea, Michael Kuehl, Timothy Blada, Morgan Quigley, Jesper Smith, Sylvain Bertrand, Tingfan Wu (+2 others)
2015 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)  
In this paper we introduce STEPPR (Sandia Transmission-Efficient Prototype Promoting Research), a bipedal robot designed to explore efficient bipedal walking. The initial iteration of this robot achieves efficient motions through powerful electromagnetic actuators and highly back-drivable synthetic rope transmissions. We show how the addition of parallel elastic elements at select joints is predicted to provide substantial energetic benefits: reducing cost of transport by 30 to 50 percent. Two
more » ... oints in particular, hip roll and ankle pitch, reduce dissipated power over three very different gait types: human walking, human-like robot walking, and crouched robot walking. Joint springs based on this analysis are tested and validated experimentally. Finally, this paper concludes with the design of two unique parallel spring mechanisms to be added to the current STEPPR robot in order to provide improved locomotive efficiency.
doi:10.1109/icra.2015.7139275 dblp:conf/icra/MazumdarSSHLDKB15 fatcat:gvx3hxi2qjgunax25xkvcbnkm4