Browsing by Subject "Legged Locomotion"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Open Access
Adaptive control of a one-legged hopping robot through dynamically embedded spring-loaded inverted pendulum template
(2011) Uyanık, İsmail
Practical realization of model-based dynamic legged behaviors is substantially more challenging than statically stable behaviors due to their heavy dependence on second-order system dynamics. This problem is further aggravated by the dif- ficulty of accurately measuring or estimating dynamic parameters such as spring and damping constants for associated models and the fact that such parameters are prone to change in time due to heavy use and associated material fatigue. In the first part of this thesis, we present an on-line, model-based adaptive control method for running with a planar spring-mass hopper based on a once-per-step parameter correction scheme. Our method can be used both as a system identifi- cation tool to determine possibly time-varying spring and damping constants of a miscalibrated system, or as an adaptive controller that can eliminate steady-state tracking errors through appropriate adjustments on dynamic system parameters. We use Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) model, which is the mostly used, effective and accurate descriptive tool for running animals of different sizes and morphologies, to evaluate our algorithm. We present systematic simulation studies to show that our method can successfully accomplish both accurate tracking and system identification tasks on this model. Additionally, we extend our simulations to Torque-Actuated Dissipative Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (TD-SLIP) model towards its implementation on an actual robot platform. In the second part of the thesis, we present the design and construction of a onelegged hopping robot we built to test the practical applicability of our adaptive control algorithm. We summarize the mechanical, electronics and software design of our robot as well as the performed system identification studies to calibrate the unknown system parameters. Finally, we investigate the robot’s motion achieved by a simple torque-actuated open loop controller.
Open Access
Analysis and control of periodic gaits in legged robots
(2017-11) Hamzaçebi, Hasan
The analysis, identi cation and control of legged locomotion have been an interest for various researchers towards building legged robots that move like the animals do in nature. The extensive studies on understanding legged locomotion led to some mathematical models, such as the Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) template (and its various derivatives), that can be used to identify, analyze and control legged locomotor systems. Despite their seemingly simple nature, as being a simple point mass attached to a massless spring from dynamics perspective, the SLIP model constitutes a restricted three-body problem formulation, whose non-integrability has been proven long before. Thus, researchers came up with approximate analytical solutions or they used some other different techniques such as partial feedback linearization for the sake of obtaining analytical Poincar e return maps that govern the motion of the desired legged locomotor system. In the first part of this thesis, we consider a SLIP-based legged locomotion model, which we call as Multi-Actuated Dissipative SLIP (MD-SLIP) that extends the simple SLIP model with two additional actuators. The first one is a linear actuator attached serially to the leg spring to ensure direct control on the compression and decompression of the leg spring. The second actuator is a rotatory one that is attached to hip, which provides ability to inject some torque inputs to the system dynamics, which is mainly inspired by biological legged locomotor systems. Following the analysis of MD-SLIP model, we utilize a partial feedback linearization strategy by which we can cancel some nonlinear dynamics of the legged locomotion model and obtain exact analytical solutions without needing any approximation. Having exact analytical solutions is crucial to investigate stability characteristics of the MD-SLIP model during its hopping gait behavior. We illustrate and compare the applicability of our solutions with open-loop and closedloop hopping performances on various rough terrain simulations. Finally, we show how the MD-SLIP model can be anchored to bipedal legged locomotion models, where we assign two independent MD-SLIP models to each leg and investigate the system performance under their simultaneous but independent control. The proposed bipedal legged locomotion model is called as Multi-Actuated Dissipative Bipedal SLIP (MDB-SLIP) model. The key idea here is that we can still utilize the partial feedback linearization concept that we applied for the original MD-SLIP model and ensure exact analytical solutions for the MDB-SLIP model as well. We also provide detailed investigations for open-loop and closed-loop walking gait performance of the MDB-SLIP model on different noisy terrain profiles.
Open Access
Experimental validation of a feed-forward predictor for the spring-loaded inverted pendulum template
(IEEE, 2015-02) Uyanik, I.; Morgül, O.; Saranli, U.
Widely accepted utility of simple spring-mass models for running behaviors as descriptive tools, as well as literal control targets, motivates accurate analytical approximations to their dynamics. Despite the availability of a number of such analytical predictors in the literature, their validation has mostly been done in simulation, and it is yet unclear how well they perform when applied to physical platforms. In this paper, we extend on one of the most recent approximations in the literature to ensure its accuracy and applicability to a physical monopedal platform. To this end, we present systematic experiments on a well-instrumented planar monopod robot, first to perform careful identification of system parameters and subsequently to assess predictor performance. Our results show that the approximate solutions to the spring-loaded inverted pendulum dynamics are capable of predicting physical robot position and velocity trajectories with average prediction errors of 2% and 7%, respectively. This predictive performance together with the simple analytic nature of the approximations shows their suitability as a basis for both state estimators and locomotion controllers. © 2004-2012 IEEE.
Open Access
Identification and stability analysis of periodic motions for a planar legged runner with a rigid body and a compliant leg
(2013) Bayır, Güneş
The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) model is an extensively used and fundamental template for modeling human and animal locomotion. Despite its wide use, the SLIP is a very simple model and considering the effects of body dynamics only as a point mass. Although the assumption of a point mass for the upper body simplifies system dynamics, it prevents us from performing detailed analysis for more realistic robot platforms with upper trunks. Hence, we consider an extension to the classic SLIP model to include the upper body dynamics in order to better understand human and animal locomotion. Due to its coupled rotational dynamics, extending the SLIP model to the Body-Attached Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (BA-SLIP) brings additional difficulties in the analysis process, making it more difficult to obtain analytical solutions. Consequently, simulations have been used to reveal the periodic structure behind locomotion with this model, and to find fixed points of discretized system dynamics. These fixed points correspond to periodic motions of the system and are important in designing controllers since they are used as steady-state control targets for most applications. The main concern of this thesis is to find fixed points of the BA-SLIP model and to investigate the dimension of the fixed point manifold. We performed extensive simulation studies to find fixed points of the system and the properties of the underlying space with a PD controller. Our simulations revealed the existence of periodic gaits, in which the upper body should be downward oriented for stable locomotion. Additionally, a region of stability is found such that the model sustains periodic gaits when it stays inside this region. Finally, we show that fixed points for running with upright body orientation are unstable when system dynamics are regulated with a constant parameter controller. We also present some simulation results which indicate the existence of stable periodic motions when controllers with time varying parameters, that use current state information, are used.
Open Access
Model based methods for the control and planning of running robots
(2009) Arslan, Ömür
The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) model has long been established as an effective and accurate descriptive model for running animals of widely differing sizes and morphologies. Not surprisingly, the ability of such a simple spring-mass model to capture the essence of running motivated several hopping robot designs as well as the use of the SLIP model as a control target for more complex legged robot morphologies. Further research on the SLIP model led to the discovery of several analytic approximations to its normally nonintegrable dynamics. However, these approximations mostly focus on steady-state running with symmetric trajectories due to their linearization of gravitational effects, an assumption that is quickly violated for locomotion on more complex terrain wherein transient, non-symmetric trajectories dominate. In the first part of the thesis , we introduce a novel gravity correction scheme that extends on one of the more recent analytic approximations to the SLIP dynamics and achieves good accuracy even for highly non-symmetric trajectories. Our approach is based on incorporating the total effect of gravity on the angular momentum throughout a single stance phase and allows us to preserve the analytic simplicity of the approximation to support research on reactive footstep planning for dynamiclegged locomotion. We compare the performance of our method with two other existing analytic approximations by simulation and show that it outperforms them for most physically realistic non-symmetric SLIP trajectories while maintaining the same accuracy for symmetric trajectories. Additionally, this part of the thesis continues with analytical approximations for tunable stiffness control of the SLIP model and their motion prediction performance analysis. Similarly, we show performance improvement for the variable stiffness approximation with gravity correction method. Besides this, we illustrate a possible usage of approximate stance maps for the controlling of the SLIP model. Furthermore, the main driving force behind research on legged robots has always been their potential for high performance locomotion on rough terrain and the outdoors. Nevertheless, most existing control algorithms for such robots either make rigid assumptions about their environments (e.g flat ground), or rely on kinematic planning with very low speeds. Moreover, the traditional separation of planning from control often has negative impact on the robustness of the system against model uncertainty and environment noise. In the second part of the thesis, we introduce a new method for dynamic, fully reactive footstep planning for a simplified planar spring-mass hopper, a frequently used dynamic model for running behaviors. Our approach is based on a careful characterization of the model dynamics and an associated deadbeat controller, used within a sequential composition framework. This yields a purely reactive controller with a very large, nearly global domain of attraction that requires no explicit replanning during execution. Finally, we use a simplified hopper in simulation to illustrate the performance of the planner under different rough terrain scenarios and show that it is robust to both model uncertainty and measurement noise.