Locomotion control system

Industrial Robot

ISSN: 0143-991x

Article publication date: 1 June 2002

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Keywords

Citation

Rigelsford, J. (2002), "Locomotion control system", Industrial Robot, Vol. 29 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2002.04929cad.012

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited


Locomotion control system

Locomotion control system

Keywords: Control system, Honda

Applicant: Honda Motor Co. Ltd, JapanPatent number: US5838130Publication date: 17 November 1998Title: Locomotion control system of legged mobile robot

A system for controlling locomotion of a biped mobile robot which allows the robot to walk up and down stairs with a stable posture is presented. The robot comprises a body and two articulated legs each connected to the body through hip joints and each including a foot connected to the leg through ankle joints.

Gait parameters are generated by inverse kinematic solutions such that the foot should land on a stair step from its heel and is kept in surface-contact or in point-contact by at least three points. The descent can then be controlled using the generated gait parameters. The system makes it possible to control the robot locomotion such that the robot descends stairs with a stable posture even when the foot length is greater than the stair step depth. This also makes it possible to design the size of the foot independent of the size of the stairs. The system increases the tolerance of positional errors and, therefore, increases the number of stairs that the robot can descend in one continuous movement while remaining stable.

Other related patents include: EP0856457 "Gait generation system of legged mobile robot", EP1053835 "Leg type mobile robot control apparatus" and EP1081027 "Legged mobile robot".

Jon Rigelsford

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