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Passive dynamics is an approach to robotic movement control (especially walking), based on utilising the momentum of swinging limbs for greater efficiency.
The term and its principles were developed by Tad McGeer in the late 1980s. While at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, McGeer showed that a humanlike frame can walk itself down a slope without requiring muscles or motors. Unlike traditional robots, which guzzle energy by using motors to control every motion, McGeer's early passive-dynamic robots relied only on gravity and the natural swinging of their limbs to move forward.
Energy efficiency in level-ground transport is quantified in terms of the dimensionless specific cost of transport, which is the amount of energy required to carry a unit weight a unit distance. Passive dynamic walkers such as the Cornell biped have the same specific cost of transport as humans, 0.20. Not incidentally, passive dynamic walkers have humanlike gaits. By comparison, Honda's biped ASIMO, which does not utilize the passive dynamics of its own limbs, has a specific cost of transport of 3.23.
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