Following a link Russell posted earlier, I came upon this page:
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~shc/robots.html which says:

"...the motion we understand as walking may in fact largely be the natural
dynamical consequence of the mass properties of the human body. That is,
people may mostly let their legs swing as they would on their own, then add
a little control and power, yielding a gait with inherently low energetic
and control demands. In contrast to rigidly joint-controlled robots, walking
robots based on passive-dynamic principles can have human-like efficiency
and actuation requirements (e.g. McGeer 1990, Collins et al 2005). The
simplicity, efficiency, ease of control, and low cost of passive-dynamics
based robots may also make them more practical in autonomous robotic
applications."

You have GOT to see this movie
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~shc/movies/compilation.mov (8 MB) in
which you see the frame walking just like a human without any power, other
than that provided by a slight ramp, or in other cases with only 11 watts
supplied. That is cool as heck. Asimo's battery life would be much better...


It has that beauty that you can't describe, but every engineer knows when
they see it. The closest word is: Clean. Or maybe slick? Simple yet
effective?

---
James Newton, massmind.org Knowledge Archiver 
james@massmind.org 1-619-652-0593 fax:1-208-279-8767 
All the engineering secrets worth knowing:
http://techref.massmind.org What do YOU know?



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