title: Biologically inspired adaptive walking of a quadruped robot.
abstract: We describe here the efforts to induce a quadruped robot to walk with medium-walking speed on irregular terrain based on biological concepts. We propose the necessary conditions for stable dynamic walking on irregular terrain in general, and we design the mechanical and the neural systems by comparing biological concepts with those necessary conditions described in physical terms. PD-controller at joints constructs the virtual spring-damper system as the viscoelasticity model of a muscle. The neural system model consists of a central pattern generator (CPG), reflexes and responses. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed neural system model control using the quadruped robots called 'Tekken1&2'. MPEG footage of experiments can be seen at http://www.kimura.is.uec.ac.jp.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Information Systems, University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1, Chofugaoka, Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan. hiroshi@kimura.is.uec.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kimura
authors.forename: Yasuhiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fukuoka
authors.forename: Avis H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001695:Biology / Q000379:methods*; D032701:Biomimetics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000639:trends*; D003491:Cybernetics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical; D016138:Walking