On the use of Hybrid Control for Legged Locomotion

In this paper, we develop a hybrid control approach for legged locomotion. We motivate the development of the control architecture using the results of a series of walking, running and obstacle climbing experiments conducted using a six legged robot called HEX. Our initial simulation results indicate the potential stability of the control approach, and our future analytical work should provide the formal proof of these results. robot called HEX (Section II). The second part utilizes the experimental results and develops a hybrid control architecture for legged locomotion (Section IV). The hybrid control problem considered as a result is unique in that it considers switching between reference models in a model reference control architecture. The third part describes ongoing analytical work in the use of hybrid control for legged locomotion.