A proposed hybrid neural network for position control of a walking robot

The use of a proposed recurrent neural network control system to control a four-legged walking robot is presented in this paper. The control system consists of a neural controller, a standard PD controller, and the walking robot. The robot is a planar four-legged walking robot. The proposed Neural Network (NN) is employed as an inverse controller of the robot. The NN has three layers, which are input, hybrid hidden and output layers. In addition to feedforward connections from the input layer to the hidden layer and from the hidden layer to the output layer, there is also a feedback connection from the output layer to the hidden layer and from the hidden layer to itself. The reason to use a hybrid layer is that the robot’s dynamics consists of linear and nonlinear parts. The results show that the neural-network controller can efficiently control the prescribed positions of the stance and swing legs during the double stance phase of the gait cycle after sufficient training periods. The goal of the use of this proposed neural network is to increase the robustness of the control of the dynamic walking gait of this robot in the case of external disturbances. Also, the PD controller alone and Computed Torque Method (CTM) control system are used to control the walking robot’s position for comparison. Ş. Yıldırım ( ) Mechanical Engineering Department, Engineering Faculty, Erciyes University, 38039 Kayseri, Turkey e-mail: [email protected]