This paper presents a modular approach to the development of an interactive software environment for gait generation and control design of Sony legged robots. A number of modules have been developed for monitoring robot states, gait generation, control design and image processing. A dynamic model of the leg and wheel-like motion are proposed to combine both wheeled and legged properties to prod...

In this paper we investigate a biological framework to generate and adapt a motion pattern so that can be energy efficient. In fact, the motion pattern in legged animals and human emerges among interaction between a central pattern generator neural network called CPG and the musculoskeletal system. Here, we model this neuro - musculoskeletal system by means of a leg - like mechanical system cal...

This paper deals with locomotion control of legged robots using nonlinear oscillators. The proposed control system is composed of a motion plan system and a motion control system. The motion plan system is composed of a motion generator and a trajectory generator. The nonlinear oscillators in the motion generator tune the phases through the feedback signals from the touch sensors at the tips of...

Slide 0 In this talk, we present a general trajectory generation scheme for a class of " kinematic " legged robots. The method does not depend upon the number of legs, nor is it based on foot placement concepts. Instead, our method is based on an extension of a nonlinear trajectory generation algorithm for smooth systems to the legged case, where the relevant mechanics are not smooth. Our exten...

We study the problem of computing the free space F of a simple legged robot called the spider robot. The body of this robot is a single point and the legs are attached to the body. The robot is subject to two constraints: each leg has a maximal extension R (accessibility constraint) and the body of the robot must lie above the convex hull of its feet (stability constraint). Moreover, the robot ...

[Purpose] To investigate the effects of erect sitting, slouched posture with cross-legged sitting, and erect posture with cross-legged sitting on the lumbar and pelvic angles, and gluteal pressure. [Subjects] For the experiments, 17 healthy women were recruited. [Methods] All subjects were asked to perform three sitting postures: erect sitting, slouched posture with cross-legged sitting, and er...

A planner for statically-stable motion of a legged robotic vehicle over an uneven terrain is presented that can plan the footplacement of individual legs for highly cluttered terrain. A method for determining the traversability over a generic discretised height map terrain is presented. Planning is broken into two levels of refinement to reduce the overall complexity and incorporates a number o...

Terrain geometry is, in general, nonsmooth, nonlinear, nonconvex, and, if perceived through a robot-centric visual unit, appears partially occluded and noisy. This article presents the complete control pipeline capable of handling aforementioned problems real-time. We formulate trajectory optimization problem that jointly optimizes over base pose footholds, subject to height map. To avoid conve...

Legged off-road vehicles exhibit better mobility while moving on rough terrain. Development of legged mechanisms represents a challenging problem and has attracted significant attention from both artists and engineers.The Theo Jansen mechanism is gaining widespread popularity among the legged robotics community due to its scalable design, energy, efficiency, low payload-to-machine-load ratio, b...