A quasi-passive leg exoskeleton is presented for load-carrying augmentation during walking. The exoskeleton has no actuators, only ankle and hip springs and a knee variabledamper. Without a payload, the exoskeleton weighs 11.7 kg and requires only 2 Watts of electrical power during loaded walking. For a 36 kg payload, we demonstrate that the quasi-passive exoskeleton transfers on average 80% of...

in this paper an energy dissipation rate control (edrc) method is introduced, which could provide stable walking or running gaits for legged robots. this method is realized by developing a semi-analytical pattern generation approach for a robot during each single support phase (ssp). as yet, several control methods based on passive dynamic walking have been proposed by researchers to provide an...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the contribution of passive mechanisms to lower extremity joint kinetics in normal walking at slow, comfortable, and fast speeds. Twenty healthy young adults participated in a passive testing protocol in which the relaxed lower limb was manipulated through full sagittal hip, knee, and ankle ranges of motion while kinematics and applied forces were si...

This study investigated the energetics of the human ankle during the stance phase of downhill walking with the goal of modeling ankle behavior with a passive spring and damper mechanism. Kinematic and kinetic data were collected on eight male participants while walking down a ramp with inclination varying from 0° to 8°. The ankle joint moment in the sagittal plane was calculated using inverse d...

We consider passive dynamic walking machines of the kind originally studied by McGeer. For passive walking on arbitrarily small slopes, we show that any existing gaits must be correspondingly slow. The argument is rst presented for nonsingular mass distributions, where it is shown that small slopes preclude long steps and that small steps imply low speeds. The argument is then extended to singu...

SUMMARY Achieving energy-efficient and high-speed dynamic walking has become one of the main subjects of research in the area of robotic biped locomotion, and passive dynamic walking has attracted a great deal of attention as a solution to this. It is empirically known that the convex curve of the foot, which characterizes passive–dynamic walkers, has an important effect on increasing the walki...

The focus of studies in the field of passive walking has often been on straight walking, while less attention has been paid to the field of turning motions. In this paper, the passive motions of a finite width rimless wheel as the simplest 3D model of passive biped walkers was investigated with a focus on turning motions. For this purpose, the hybrid model of the system consisting of continuous...