It has been shown that compass-like bipeds can walk passively
by gravity-induced motion. Similarly, it has been stated that the
unipodal phase of human gait may be regarded as a
passive motion. This paper is aimed at determining precisely to
what extent the swing phase of human-like walking can be
considered as a non-actuated motion. More specifically, a method is
developed that makes it possible to adjust initial conditions, step
length and walk speed, as well as mass and inertia
distribution of a bipedal robot, in order to generate a
passive swing motion. The approach is demonstrated by using a
7-link planar biped. Numerical simulations show that purely passive unipodal
transferring cannot be fully satisfactory. This approach is further considered
in Part 2 of the paper which consists in computing
optimal actuating joint torques to create perfectly feasible motions.