University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (ESE) Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering 2007 DESIGN OF A MULTI-DIRECTIONAL VARIABLE STIFFNESS LEG FOR DYNAMIC RUNNING Kevin C. Galloway University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Jonathan E. Clark Florida State University,
[email protected] Daniel E. Koditschek University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/ese_papers Part of the Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Kevin C. Galloway, Jonathan E. Clark, and Daniel E. Koditschek, "DESIGN OF A MULTI-DIRECTIONAL VARIABLE STIFFNESS LEG FOR DYNAMIC RUNNING", . January 2007. @inproceedings{ Galloway.07, Author = {Galloway, K.C. and Clark, J.E. and Koditschek, D.E.}, Title = {Design of a Multi-Directional Variable Stiffness Leg for Dynamic Runnings}, BookTitle = {ASME Int. Mech. Eng. Congress and Exposition}, Year = {2007}} This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/ese_papers/508 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DESIGN OF A MULTI-DIRECTIONAL VARIABLE STIFFNESS LEG FOR DYNAMIC RUNNING Abstract Recent developments in dynamic legged locomotion have focused on encoding a substantial component of leg intelligence into passive compliant mechanisms. One of the limitations of this approach is reduced adaptability: the final leg mechanism usually performs optimally for a small range of conditions (i.e. a certain robot weight, terrain, speed, gait, and so forth). For many situations in which a small locomotion system experiences a change in any of these conditions, it is desirable to have a variable stiffness leg to tune the natural frequency of the system for effective gait control. In this paper, we present an overview of variable stiffness leg spring designs, and introduce a new approach specifically for autonomous dynamic legged locomotion.