The Role of Visual and Nonvisual Information in the Control of Locomotion.

During locomotion, retinal flow, gaze angle, and vestibular information can contribute to one's perception of self-motion. Their respective roles were investigated during active steering: Retinal flow and gaze angle were biased by altering the visual information during computer-simulated locomotion, and vestibular information was controlled through use of a motorized chair that rotated the participant around his or her vertical axis. Chair rotation was made appropriate for the steering response of the participant or made inappropriate by rotating a proportion of the veridical amount. Large steering errors resulted from selective manipulation of retinal flow and gaze angle, and the pattern of errors provided strong evidence for an additive model of combination. Vestibular information had little or no effect on steering performance, suggesting that vestibular signals are not integrated with visual information for the control of steering at these speeds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

一处室内轮式自主移动机器人的导航控制研究

介绍了一种室内移动机器人CASIA-I.对该机器人的运动机构做了较为详细地阐述, 针对该运动机构给出了机器人的运动方程和一种导航控制算法,并根据该算法进行了软件仿真 和实物实验.在软件仿真和实物实验两种环境下,机器人都能够实时避开障碍物奔向目标.仿真 和实验表明:该移动平台具有良好的可靠性,且该导航控制算法是一种有效的导航算法.     

Modular Reconfigurable Robots in Space Applications

Robots used for tasks in space have strict requirements. Modular reconfigurable robots have a variety of attributes that are well suited to these conditions, including: serving as many different tools at once (saving weight), packing into compressed forms (saving space) and having high levels of redundancy (increasing robustness). In addition, self-reconfigurable systems can self-repair and adapt to changing or unanticipated conditions. This paper will describe such a self-reconfigurable modular robot: PolyBot. PolyBot has significant potential in the space manipulation and surface mobility class of applications for space.     

Biped Locomotion by Reduced Ankle Power

Power reduction in the ankle joints of a biped robot is considered inthis paper. Ankles of human beings have small torque and are veryflexible within a certain range of motion (very stiff near and beyondthis range). This characteristic makes foot landing soft and gives agood contact between its sole and the ground. This feature can beimplemented in a biped robot by using a small actuator for the anklejoints. A small actuator consumes less energy and reduces the weightof the leg. With less power in the ankle joints, robot walkingbecomes more difficult to control. This problem can be solved byproviding a feedback control mechanism as presented in this paper. Thecontrol mechanism uses the motion of the body and the swinging leg toeliminate instability caused by the weak ankle. Two locomotionexamples, standing and walking, were investigated respectively toshow the validity of the proposed control scheme. In standing, thecontrol input is the displacement of the ankle joint of thesupporting leg. The control mechanism decides the bending angle ofthe body and the position of the swinging leg. For walking, only thebending angle of the body is used to avoid the discontinuity of thecontrol input. Experimental results are presented to show theeffectiveness of the control mechanism.     

基于T-S模糊再励学习的稳定双足步态生成算法

提出了一种基于T S模糊再励学习的稳定双足步态生成算法 .将再励学习引入T S模糊神经网学习增益参数 ,从而采用较少的模糊规则充分逼近了由ZMP曲线到髋关节轨迹的非线性变化关系 ,并将连续空间的多变量变化转换为一维独立动作增益的并行搜索 .仿真结果和双足机器人Luna的实验数据都验证了算法的可行性 .     

仿人机器人发展现状及其腰关节的作用

仿人机器人是研究人类智能的高级平台，是综合多种学科的复杂智能机械，其研制和开发涉及到各学科、多方面问题，目前已成为机器人领域的研究热点问题之一．本文对仿人机器人目前的发展现状进行了综述，分析了多种仿人机器人的自由度分布，介绍了具有不同结构特点的腰机构，分析了腰关节在仿人机器人的稳定动态步行、全身协调运动及有情感步行等方面的重要作用．本文还指出了仿人机器人目前的主要研究方向．     

Friction enhancement in concertina locomotion of snakes

Narrow crevices are challenging terrain for most organisms and biomimetic robots. Snakes move through crevices using sequential folding and unfolding of their bodies in the manner of an accordion or concertina. In this combined experimental and theoretical investigation, we elucidate this effective means of moving through channels. We measure the frictional properties of corn snakes, their body kinematics and the transverse forces they apply to channels of varying width and inclination. To climb channels inclined at 60°, we find snakes use a combination of ingenious friction-enhancing techniques, including digging their ventral scales to double their frictional coefficient and pushing channel walls transversely with up to nine times body weight. Theoretical modelling of a one-dimensional n-linked crawler is used to calculate the transverse force factor of safety: we find snakes push up to four times more than required to prevent sliding backwards, presumably trading metabolic energy for an assurance of wall stability.     

Stability analysis via the concept of Lyapunov exponents: a case study in optimal controlled biped standing

Balancing control is important for biped standing. In spite of large efforts, it is very difficult to design balancing control strategies satisfying three requirements simultaneously: maintaining postural stability, improving energy efficiency and satisfying the constraints between the biped feet and the ground. In this article, a proportional-derivative (PD) controller is proposed for a standing biped, which is simplified as a two-link inverted pendulum with one additional rigid foot-link. The genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search for the control gain meeting all three requirements. The stability analysis of such a deterministic biped control system is carried out using the concept of Lyapunov exponents (LEs), based on which, the system stability, where the disturbance comes from the initial states, and the structural stability, where the disturbance comes from the PD gains, are examined quantitively in terms of stability region. This article contributes to the biped balancing control, more significantly, the method shown in the studied case of biped provides a general framework of systematic stability analysis for certain deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems.     

Simultaneous bipedal locomotion based on haptics for teleoperation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a novel, simultaneous bipedal locomotion method using haptics for remote operation of biped robots. In general, traditional biped walking methods require very high computational power and advanced controllers to perform the required task. However, in this proposed method, a master exoskeleton attached to the human’s lower body is used to obtain the trajectory and haptic information to generate the trajectory of the slave biped robot in real time. Lateral motion of the center of mass of the biped is constrained in this experiment. Also, it is considered that no communication delay is presented in between the two systems in this experiment, and they are not discussed in this paper. Since a direct motion transmission is used in the proposed method, this method is quite straight forward and a simultaneous walking can be realized at the same time with high performance. Also, it does not require an exact dynamic model of the biped or specific method to plan the trajectory. The gait pattern of the biped is directly determined by that of the human. Also, the operator can feel the remote environment through the exoskeleton robot. Results obtained from the experiments validate the proposed method.