Control Design for Robust Limit-Cycle Walking

Control Design for Robust Limit-Cycle Walking

Van der Weijde, J.O.

Wisse, M. (mentor)

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

BioMechanical Engineering

BMD

2014-09-16

Within the field of humanoid robotics, stability and robustness during gait is a reoccurring challenge. In particular for limit-cycle walkers, like the humanoid robot TUlip, robustness poses a problem. To improve the robustness of limit-cycle walking, an add-on control method is proposed, which adjusts step length. The control method tries to maintain a desired orbital energy. The control method is applied on two systems of very different complexity: the Simplest Walking Model and the humanoid robot TUlip. In simulation the control method achieves a significant increase in robustness, to the extent where the model can get into a limit cycle from stance. On TUlip the control method is implemented using a human-supported gait. This implementation does not provide results concerning robustness. However, the experiment does provide insight in implementation issues and applicability of the model. Overall, the control method is found to be a promising strategy to increase robustness of non-robust gaits.

limit-cycle walking
control design
robust
Simplest Walking Model
TUlip

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e5441205-6bab-48c1-b994-bae46949a6c8

2016-12-31

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Van der Weijde, J.O.