Even though biped robots get better and better all the time,
many don't exactly have truly natural leg movements. One reason
why comes down to the fact that robot legs, with the exception
of a few models that employ passive locomotion, use control
algorithms and joint-actuation methods that don't really
approximate how a human leg works. These robots tend to move
their legs according to force trajectories or pre-programmed
positions, which can cause instability when the robot encounters
environments and obstacles not accounted for by its control
algorithms. Shane Migliore, a researcher and engineering PhD
candidate at Georgia Tech, believes that there's some room for
improvement when it comes to robotic locomotion. He's been hard
at work on a two-degree-of-freedom, full-scale robot leg that
has dynamics much like a human leg. “We let the leg to go
essentially where the leg wants to go,” he says. Sounds simple,
but it isn't. Human-like locomotion requires a mix of complex
joint movements–some needing actuation