Virtual Passive Bipedal walking on the Irregular Ground using Kinetic Energy Tracking Control

This paper extends our previous study investigating a closed-loop kinetic energy tracking control algorithm for virtual passive bipedal walking. Two kinds of irregular grounds: a sloped ground composed of a series of changing slopes and a stepped ground are designed and adopted to test the stability of the control algorithm by numerical simulations. It is found that the control algorithm can adapt to the sloped ground very well, it enables robots to perform complex walking gaits like upward slope walking, level ground walking and downward slope walking. However, for the stepped ground, only the step height difference is less than 0.53% of the robot leg length can the virtual passive bipedal walking be stable. The two road conditions designed in our study represent the external step disturbance and impulse disturbance respectively. The reliability of our control algorithm is well verified through numerical experiments.