Many countries of the world including Japan will become a full-fledged aged society. According to report in Japan, the elderly population aged 65 years or over in Japan will number 33 million and will account for more than 25 percent of the population. We have to support the elderly for independence in old age so that a variety of lifestyles is possible. With the development of the robot technologies, robotics researchers have developed various kinds of human assist robot such as walking aid system and manipulation aid system for supporting the elderly.

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This paper presents an approach to the development of bipedal robotic control techniques for multiple locomotion behaviors. Insight into the fundamental behaviors of human loco-motion is obtained through the examination of experimental human data for walking on flat ground, upstairs and downstairs. Specifically, it is shown that certain outputs of the human, independent of locomotion ter-rain, can be characterized by a single function, termed the extended canonical human function. Optimized functions of this form are tracked via feedback linearization in simulations of a planar robotic biped walking on flat ground, upstairs and downstairs — these three modes of locomotion are termed “motion primi-tives.” A second optimization is presented, which yields controllers that evolve the robot from one motion primitive to another — these modes of locomotion are termed “motion transitions.” A final simulation is given, which shows the controlled evolution of a robotic biped as it transitions through each mode of loco-motion over a pyramidal staircase.

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WHEN HUMANS AND OTHER ANIMALS run and hop, they operate with muscle efficiencies nearly twice those observed during cycling. This “free energy” is due to the storage and return of elastic energy in muscles and tendons during the stretch-shorten cycles of landing and takeoff. If spring-like tendons and muscles can save substantial energy, could artificial springs added to the legs further reduce the metabolic costof locomotion?

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Locomotor function is often limited following a neurological injury, although the underlying mechanisms are not always clear. While walking appears to be a complex task from a neural control perspective, many aspects of gait may be predicted simply from the passive mechanics of the body, the focus of a field commonly termed dynamic walking.

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Abstract—A recent trend in virtual environments aims at making the user free of devices or limitations in its motion, at the benefit of immersiveness and interactivity. This work introduces an interaction paradigm that goes beyond motion based interaction, by making use of measured real forces exerted by the user in free space. The sensation of touch with virtual object is obtained by vibrotactile stimulation combining virtual contact information with measured forces. In this way the user has an additional dimension of interactivity at the benefit of immersivity, without incurring in the reduction of sense of presence introduced by grounded haptic interfaces. This paradigm is presented and discussed in particular in the context of a boxing training simulation, as one of the possible application scenarios.

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