Principles of energetics and stability in human locomotion

People are skilled walkers and runners. We move with economy, agility and speed, and can do so even while we travel through our rough and variable world. Presentday humanoid robots are certainly much less capable than humans at accomplishing the same locomotor tasks (1). One potential path to improving the design and control of robots is to draw inspiration and guidance from biology. That is, we may be able to build more capable robots if we better understand how people move. One argument against this possibility is that humans and robots are comprised of fundamentally different components. Where robots are built using metals, encoders, wires, computers, magnetic motors, and batteries, humans have evolved to use bone, sensory cells, nerves, brains, muscles and food.

[1]  Jack M. Winters,et al.  Biomechanics and Neural Control of Posture and Movement , 2011, Springer New York.

[2]  Lambert Schomaker,et al.  2000 IEEE/RSJ International Conference On Intelligent Robots And Systems , 2000, Proceedings. 2000 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2000) (Cat. No.00CH37113).

[3]  R. Rosenfeld Nature , 2009, Otolaryngology--head and neck surgery : official journal of American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

[4]  L. Christophorou Science , 2018, Emerging Dynamics: Science, Energy, Society and Values.

[5]  Robotica , 2019, TVZ - Verpleegkunde in praktijk en wetenschap.