Information Trust Institute: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ABSTRACT:

In this talk we will discuss the problem of generating stable walking gaits in bipedal locomotion using active feedback control. Exploiting the well-known notion of passive dynamic walking, we will show how to generate stable periodic gaits on arbitrary ground slopes and how to regulate forward walking speed. Our results rely on our recently introduced notion of "Controlled Symmetry in Lagrangian Systems" and "Trajectory Time Scaling" together with "Passivity-Based Control" to achieve robustness to disturbances and slope variation. We will present the theoretical results and animations showing the performance of the controller on several bipeds including the compass-gait biped, biped with knees, and biped with both knees and torso.