2.S994/2.

S997 Biomimetics, Biomechanics,

and Bio-inspired Robots (Fall 2013)
Example Individual Project Proposal: The Effect of Swing Leg Retraction Rate on
Robot Running Efficiency [1]

Motivation

Recent advances in legged robots promise enhanced mobility of autonomous vehicles in unstructured environments [2, 3, 4]. Legged systems have the potential to outperform advanced
wheeled and tracked vehicles in applications that require fast locomotion over rough terrain
because discreet foot placement can reduce the effects of terrain irregularities and instabilities [5]. To simplify foot placement control, studies [6, 7] suggest influencing stance dynamics
by controlling the angle-of-attack, the effective leg angle at the moment of ground contact.
While it is clear that the foot placement algorithm is critical to the success of a legged robot
controller, there is growing evidence that foot and leg speed at and near the moment of ground
contact also plays an important role, especially as locomotion speed increases [8, 9, 10, 11].
Humans and animals change the foot and leg speed at the moment of ground contact
through a behavior called swing leg retraction (SLR), in which the airborne front leg rotates
rearward before touchdown. Seyfarth et al. [8] studied the effect of SLR on running stability
and stated that SLR rate can be tuned to improve running stability considerably. Daley
et al. [9] considered the effect of SLR on injury risk, arguing that increasing reduces peak
leg forces after a drop in terrain height.
It is also suggested that SLR can improve energy efficiency [10]. In a previous study [11],
the authors showed analytically that SLR reduces touchdown energy losses of a prismaticjointed leg by decreasing foot speed relative to the ground at the moment of contact. However,
this does not necessarily mean that overall energy efficiency is improved. For instance, additional energy required to swing the leg at the desired rate might exceed the reduction in
touchdown loss. The goal of this study is to investigate whether SLR can indeed improve
the overall energy efficiency and to determine the relationship between SLR and energy efficiency. We hypothesize that overal energetic efficiency will be maximum when the impact loss
is minimized: at the SLR rate that minimizes the tangential speed of the foot with respect
to the ground.

Experiment Design

To determine whether swing leg retraction can increase the overall energy efficiency of running
robots, we will use a Matlab simulation to find the optimally efficient limit-cycle gaits of
a running robot at a fixed Froude number over a range of retraction rates. We will create a
simple stabilizing controller for each gait based on the linearized limit cycle dynamics (i.e.
using the jacobian of the step-to-step return map), measure the efficiency of each controller
on a physical robot, and study the effect of the swing leg retraction rate on the measured
efficiency.
The running model proposed by McGeer in [12] has legs with distributed mass that can
yield non-zero impact losses, which makes the model suitable for analyzing energy efficiency.
In this study, we use a variation of the McGeer running model (Figure 1) consisting of a point
mass body with two rigid legs of distributed mass, each connected by a massless spring to a
massless point foot. A torque actuator between the legs provides energy and control as the
model runs over a flat, level surface.

Figure 1: Modified McGeer running model with point foot and hip torque T . The swing
leg rotates with retraction rate and the foot has tangential speed vt immediately prior to
contact with the ground. After contact, the foot can slip due to finite friction. When the
foot does come to rest with respect to the ground, it acts as a fixed pivot point until the leg
spring free length l0 is reached and takeoff occurs.

Robot Design

The robot will be designed to embody the modified McGeer model. Two motors in parallel
will produce the torque at the hip, and one motor per leg will correct for energy losses
in a helical compression spring. Three mbed microcontrollers will be used to reduce the
computational burden on each:
one master mbed will run the high level controller and send commands to slave mbeds,
one slave mbed will control the torque of the hip actuators and log data, and
one slave mbed will control the torque of the leg actuators and log data.
The structure of the robot will be printed using the uPrint rapid prototyping machine. We
will need three special components for each leg: a linear slide to guide the translation of a leg,
a helical compression spring to serve as the elastic element, and an acme screw to convert the
rotary motion of the motor to translation. The robot will be constrained to planar motion
on a treadmill by a similar mechanism as Ben Katzs mini-cheetah; will will coordinate with
other teams to standardize this interface.

References
[1] M. Haberland, J. D. Karssen, S. Kim, and M. Wisse, The effect of swing leg retraction
on running energy efficiency, in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2011 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on. IEEE, 2011, pp. 39573962.
[2] R. Playter, M. Buehler, and M. Raibert, Bigdog, G. R. Gerhart, C. M. Shoemaker,
and D. W. Gage, Eds., vol. 6230, no. 1. SPIE, 2006, p. 62302O. [Online]. Available:
http://link.aip.org/link/?PSI/6230/62302O/1
[3] U. Saranli, M. Buehler, and D. E. Koditschek, RHex: A Simple and Highly Mobile
Hexapod Robot, The International Journal of Robotics Research, vol. 20, no. 7, pp.
616631, 2001. [Online]. Available: http://ijr.sagepub.com/content/20/7/616.abstract
[4] S. Kim, J. E. Clark, and M. R. Cutkosky, iSprawl: Design and Tuning
for High-speed Autonomous Open-loop Running, The International Journal of
Robotics Research, vol. 25, no. 9, pp. 903912, 2006. [Online]. Available:
http://ijr.sagepub.com/content/25/9/903.abstract
[5] M. H. Raibert, Legged robots, Commun. ACM, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 499514, 1986.
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[6] A. Seyfarth, H. Geyer, M. Gunther, and R. Blickhan, A movement criterion for running, Journal of Biomechanics, vol. 35, pp. 649655(7), May 2002. [Online]. Available:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00219290/2002/00000035/00000005/art00245
[7] R. Blickhan, The spring-mass model for running and hopping, Journal of Biomechanics, vol. 22, no. 11-12, pp. 12171227, 1989.
[8] A. Seyfarth, H. Geyer, and H. Herr, Swing-leg retraction: a simple control model for
stable running, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 206, no. 15, p. 2547, 2003.
[9] M. Daley and J. Usherwood, Two explanations for the compliant running paradox:
reduced work of bouncing viscera and increased stability in uneven terrain, Biology
Letters, vol. 6, no. 3, p. 418, 2010.
[10] M. H. Raibert, Legged robots that balance. Cambridge, MA, USA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1986.
[11] J. G. D. Karssen, M. Haberland, M. Wisse, and S. Kim, The optimal swing-leg retraction rate for running, in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,
2011, accepted for publication.
[12] T. McGeer, Passive bipedal running, Proc. R. Soc. B, vol. 240, no. 1297, pp. 107134,
1990.