Traction Monitoring for Collision Detection with Legged Robots

With the introduction of commercially available programmable legged robots, a generic software method for detection of abnormalities in the robots’ locomotion is required. Our approach is to gain satisfactory results using a bare minimum amount of hardware feedback; In most cases we are able detect faults using only the joint angle sensors. Methods for recognising several types of collision as well as a loss of traction are examined. We are particularly interested in applying such techniques to Sony AIBO robots in the RoboCup legged league environment. This investigation provided us with a technique that enabled us to detect collisions with reliable accuracy using limited training time.