Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
7
A BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED APPROACH
TOWARD AUTONOMOUS
REAL-WORLD ROBOTS
Frank Kirchner and Dirk Spenneberg
Department of Computer Science,
University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
We present an approach inspired by biological principles to design the control system for an eight-
legged walking robot. The approach is based on two biological control primitives: central pattern
generators and coupled reflexes. By using these mechanisms we can achieve omnidirectional walk-
ing and smooth gait transitions in a high-degree-of-freedom (14) walking machine. Additionally, the
approach allows us to freely mix rhythmic activity with posture changes of the robot without reduc-
ing forward speed. This approach has proved to be extremely successful on rough terrain and has
been evaluated in real-world tests over a variety of different substrates,
1.
INTRODUCTION
The focus of our approach was to develop an eight-legged robot (see Figure
1), which should be capable of robust locomotion on extremely difficult terrains
(rock, sand, inclinations, and combinations thereof).
The approach features a hierarchical control architecture that combines bio-
logically inspired principles of locomotion control, such as central pattern gen-
erators and reflex mechanisms with a quasi-parallel behavior-based approach
(for biological background on the acquisition of motor behavior, see Part III,
chapter 5.3, by Kolb and Timmann, this volume). The system also scales upward
Address correspondence to: Frank Kirchner, Department of Computer Science, University of Bre-
men, Building MZH3100, Bibliothekstrasse 1, 28350 Bremen, Germany (frank.kirchner@ infor-
matik.uni-bremen.de)
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