Searching a Scalable Approach to Cerebellar Based Control

Decades of research into the structure and function of the cerebellum have led to a clear understanding of many of its cells, as well as how learning might take place. Furthermore, there are many theories on what signals the cerebellum operates on, and how it works in concert with other parts of the nervous system. Nevertheless, the application of computational cerebellar models to the control of robot dynamics remains in its infant state. To date, few applications have been realized. The currently emerging family of light-weight robots (Hirzinger, in Proc. Second ecpd Int. Conference on Advanced Robotics, Intelligent Automation and Active Systems, 1996) poses a new challenge to robot control: due to their complex dynamics traditional methods, depending on a full analysis of the dynamics of the system, are no longer applicable since the joints influence each other dynamics during movement. Can artificial cerebellar models compete here?