"Human-Like Walking using Toes Joint and Straight Stance Leg"

This paper describes the use of an actuated toes joint in a humanoid robot to achieve human-like bipedal walking. The robot does not shorten the stance leg, but uses the segment between the ankle joint and the toes joint to over-extend the unloading leg in the double-support phase. Experiments with the servo-based humanoid robot Toni show that this approach leads to low energy-consumption in the knees and allows walking dynamically with large steps.