New Approaches to Stability

5.6 Conclusions

Static-stability measurements for walking robots have traditionally focused on geometric aspects. This chapter reports that considering geometric parameters alone in robot stability leads to inefficient robot design and robot malfunction. The effects of using this limited measurement are shown by means of computer simulation and experiments using a real walking robot. This chapter states that those problems can be overcome by taking into account joint torques and power consumption in the design of gait algorithms. A new global stability criterion is proposed to factor these new magnitudes into the staticstability margin of a walking robot, taking into consideration geometric and torque/power measurements. The global stability criterion is based on the well-known geometric stability margin (scalar) and on two new criteria, the torque-limit stability margin (vector) and the current-limit stability margin (scalar). This chapter states that it is possible to improve features and the functionality of walking robots by taking global static stability into account in the design of both robots and locomotion gaits.