Abstract

The biped dynamic walker considered in this paper has three actuators - two at the ankle joints and one at the hip joint. We consider the case of one of the two ankle actuators at fault. Despite having only two actuators operational, we show that successful gait is possible for a typical case of virtual passive dynamic walking. We analyze such gaits for local and global stability for a virtual slope and for the cases of completely unpowered or partially powered alternate steps. It is shown that completely unpowered alternate steps are preferred over partially powered alternate steps in the case of virtual passive dynamic walking for global stability, and the other way for local stability.