I wanted to create a new gait that you will not find anywhere, a gait for a “depressive robot” (well the robot is not depressed of course, it just imitate the posture of a depressive person).
It is also an interesting research work because one have to coordinate the whole body in order to create an emotion from the audience. Besides it is a good opportunity to play with the articulated torso of the robot.
Unfortunately I cannot like cartoonists, exaggerate all the postures in order to create amazing walking gaits and create stories around them.
But for a first tentative I am quite satisfied - yes always good to congratulate myself ;)
In this video the robot is walking, then stops in order to look at you, takes a breath before resuming its course.
A depressive gait – if can say so – is characterized by a:
- Reduced speed
- Reduced stride length
- Reduced body sway
- Reduces Arm swing
- “poor” Posture (rounded shoulder, head thrust forward)
- Reduced vertical movement
As I mentioned earlier, cartoonists know these things just by observing people but if you want scientific proofs you can look at this seminal work on gait associated with depressive mood [1].
The challenge here, from a technical point of view, is to create a gait with torso/shoulder thrust forward and no control over the arms (torque off on the servos).
Here I kept the legs bent and the feet flat – no heel strike - as it is the case for depressive persons actually.
I had to move the torso backward a bit during the swing phase otherwise the robot will fall forward.
[1] J. Michalak, N. Troje, J. Fischer, P. Vollmar, T. Heidenreich, and D. Schulte, “Embodiment of sadness and depression: Gait patterns associated with dysphoric mood,” Psychosomatic Med., vol. 71, no. 5, pp. 580–587, Jun. 2009.