Embodied movement strategies for development of a core-located actuation walker

This paper presents a novel strategy for bipedal locomotion that is inspired from human movement strategy. The paper describes a novel prototype that uses an actuation scheme to shifts the center of gravity of the platform to acheive forward progress. This design is inspired by key movement primitives discussed in studies of human locomotion. In particular, the paper takes inspiration from Bartenieff Fundamentals and the Basic Six exercises and presents corresponding parameters for an actuated core structure. The paper reports on the design process of a particular platform and presents an initial simulation to verify that the design causes the desired change in center of gravity of the platform, resulting in forward movement. This design allows bipedal machine movement to be better aligned to parameters that human movement experts have used to describe locomotion and, thus, could one day better recreate human gait along multiple objectives.