Control and simulation of a 3D one-legged robot

All the 3D walking bipeds up to date had to use active control or intricate compensation in the frontal plane to obtain their lateral stability in locomotion. In this paper, a novel conception of 3D flip locomotion is proposed for a simple biped model, which is actuated only in the sagittal plane, and is free to roll in the frontal plane. A control method based on partial feedback linearization is designed to realize the cyclic 3D flip gait in simulation. Then, by using the method of Poincare map, it is shown in simulation that such a flip locomotion can achieve its lateral stability with no need for actuators or compensators in the frontal plane.