Design and development of flexi ankle minimalist bipedal robot with split mass hip structure for an optimal walk stability control

This thesis presents the design and development of flexi-ankle split mass minimalist bipedal robot. The developed robot introduces the implementation of novel strategy to achieve stable bipedal walk by decoupling the walking motion control from the sideway balancing control. This strategy allows the walking controller to execute the walking task independently while the sideway balancing controller continuously maintains the balance of the robot. A new approaches of achieving smooth walking motion by planning the leg movement based on the consideration of the weight distribution and thus minimum perturbation to the motion (called hip-mass carry strategy) and smooth trajectory planning of the joint movement with impact-free motion are introduced. This thesis also presents a minimalist yet low-cost solution for sensing the stability of bipedal robot. From the design, the mathematical model of the robot is developed and the viability of the design concept is verified by dynamic simulation. From the model and simulation results, a minimalist bipedal robot prototype is developed and tested in order to prove the practicality of the proposed strategies.