Automatic Control Systems for Legged Locomotion Machines

摘要

The report is concerned with the limb coordination control problem for animals and legged vehicles. After a general survey of previous work in the area, a discussion of the mechanical, control and computer aspects of the problem is presented. This is followed by a development of several theoretical models for legged locomotion systems and a subsequent determination of the properties of these models. In particular, a necessary and sufficient condition for the stability of low speed locomotion is established. It is shown that only three of the 5040 theoretically possible gaits for quadrupeds satisfy this condition. The theoretical results on stability are used as a basis for synthesising a simple finite state control algorithm for two different gaits. The ability of these algorithms to produce stable locomotion is verified by the construction and successful testing of a small artificial quadruped with eight independently powered joints coordinated by a small purpose digital computer. (Author)