Monitoring And Error Recovery For Autonomous Walking

Abstract

Robot systems require extreme self- reliance to successfully engage in long-term au- tonomous operation. This paper describes techniques developed to provide the necessary reliability for the Ambler, a six-legged robot designed for planetary ex- ploration. The approach utilizes the Task Control Architecture to incrementally add monitoring and er- ror recovery strategies without having to modify the basic walking competence of the robot. Deliberative and reactive behaviors are combined to deal with the challenges of efficiency and safety imposed by plane- tary missions. Experimental results of long-term au- tonomous walking in rough terrain are presented.