What is Fractal Dimension

This chapter presents further investigations into the period-three route to chaos exhibited in the passive dynamic walking of the compass-gait biped robot as it goes down an inclined surface. This discovered kind of route in the passive bipedal locomotion was found to coexist with the conventional period-one passive hybrid limit cycle. The further analysis on the period-three route chaos is realized by means of the Lyapunov exponents and the fractal Lyapunov dimension. Numerical computation method of these two tools is presented. The first return Poincaré map of the chaotic attractor and its basin of attraction are presented. Furthermore, the further study of the period-three passive gait is realized. The analysis of the period-three hybrid limit cycle is given. The balance between the potential energy and the kinetic energy of the biped robot is illustrated. In addition, the basin of attraction of the period-three passive gait is also presented.