A cause of natural arm-swing in bipedal walking

Abstract

The research of humanoid is widely discussed whether by simulations or real machines. In human bipedal walking, swinging arms in opposite directions is a natural movement. In this research, a model of the humanoid robot, including slipping, bumping, surface-contacting and point-contacting of the foot has been established, and its dynamical equation is derived by the Newton–Euler method. And the natural arm-swing simulation has been produced, which showed that the input torque in yaw rotation of the torso could cause natural arm-swing. “Natural” means that the arm-swinging motion is induced by coupling effects existing in nonlinear dynamics of humanoid robot even though no torques have been input into shoulders. Based on the results, a hypothesis that the vibration in the yaw rotation of the torso caused natural arm swing is proposed. In this paper, we compared the arm-swing movement with or without the input torque of yaw rotation of the torso by using the above humanoid robot model. The simulation data proved the hypothesis to be valid.