Modelling and analysis of the passive planar rimless wheel mechanism in universal domain

Abstract

The planar rimless wheel (PRW) is a classic and simple passive dynamic mechanism to simulate biped walking, different simplified PRW models have respective descriptions and limited applications. This paper focus on constructing the general PRW model, and analyzing the intrinsic and mathematical relation between different PRW models. Based that, the limit cycle of symmetric PRW and asymmetric PRW are proposed separately. Moreover, the stability in universal domain are investigated in detail. Furthermore, simulation and experiment results show that the 2-period limit cycle motion of the asymmetric PRW is more effective, flexible and self-adaptive compared with regular rimless wheel, and more actual applications would be achieved by adopting the general model.