A Universal Model of Legged Locomotion Gaits

Abstract

Significant advances have occurred during the past two decades in issues related to the mechanical design of legged robots and the coordination and control of legs during locomotion. The performance of current legged robots, however, remains far below even their most simple counterparts in the biological world. Naturally, this has led to a search by researchers for biologically motivated approaches to the design and control of legged robots for the improvement of their performance and robustness. The use of central pattern generators is examined in this paper for the control of locomotion. In doing so, a mathematical model that has the ability to emulate arbitrary locomotion gaits is developed. A simple algorithm for encoding the characteristic gaits of bipeds, quadrupeds, and hexapeds is presented. Thereafter a locomotion control architecture is proposed for actually realizing the leg movements that correspond to various gaits. We conclude with a description of a hexaped robot that has been constructed for experimental work.