1. Introduction and Background of Jansen Walking Mechanism

The Jansen mechanism was originally invented by artist Theo Jansen in an effort to make a sculpture that can walk on its own. The mechanism has become a tool used to model walking, using the trajectory of the bottom foot joint. See an image of the Jansen mechanism below:

(n.d.). Retrieved May 7, 2020, from http://mm-nitk.vlabs.ac.in/exp25/index.html

In this mechanism, link A and link L are two stationary links. The only reason they are separate is to establish an orientation, so in my analysis, I will consider link A to be one diagonal, stationary link. With this simplification, the mechanism has twelve links. For analysis, the mechanism can be split into five different kinematic subsections. First is two four-bar mechanisms, AMJB and AMCK. These two mechanism together only have one degree of freedom because they share the same base link and input angle. Next, the mechanism has two couplers made of the triangles BDE and GHI. Lastly is the quadrilateral CDFG. The couplers and quadrilateral are both fully dependent on the positions of the two four-bar mechanisms, so this mechanism has only one degree of freedom.

This project is focused on analyzing the position response of the links as a function of the input angle of link M. The results of this analysis is compared to the movement of the prototype that I fabricated from household materials. This Jansen mechanism project was generally a success. Two main errors led to issues with the physical prototype. Despite this, the mechanism was able to produce a foot trajectory that was both similar to a human foot trajectory and verifiable with simulations in MATLAB.